Ether breaks $500 billion market cap for first time

Ether (ETH), the second most-valued cryptocurrency after Bitcoin (BTC), has hit a major milestone amid the ongoing price rally.

On May 12, Ether price set another historic record, surging to as high as $4,346, according to data from CoinMarketCap. Ether's market capitalization briefly surpassed $500 billion, reaching nearly $505 billion on Wednesday.

The new milestone marks Ether’s ongoing massive surge after ETH surpassed a $4,000 price mark for the first time in history on May 10. At the time of writing, ETH is trading at $4,317, up more than 6.4% over the past 24 hours and seeing massive gains of about 30% over the past seven days.

Ether market cap 24-hour chart. Source: CoinMarketCap

Following the parabolic surge, Ether is now larger than payment giant Visa or major investment bank JPMorgan in terms of market capitalization. At publishing time, Visa’s market valuation amounts to $481 billion, while JPMorgan’s market cap stands at $488 billion, according to data from financial information website MarketWatch.

Ether is the second cryptocurrency to hit a $500 billion market cap after Bitcoin. Ether took significantly less time to become a half a trillion-dollar asset. Launched in January 2009, Bitcoin took nearly 12 years to reach a $500 billion market capitalization in December 2020 at a price above $27,000. As the first version of an Ethereum cryptocurrency protocol was launched in July 2015, Ether is now five years and 10 months old.

As previously reported by Cointelegraph, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin became a billionaire after the Ether price rose above $3,000 on May 3. Megan Kaspar, a crypto analyst and co-founder of digital asset investment firm Magnetic, believes that Ether is now on track to hit a price target between $8,000 and $10,000 by late 2021. The analyst previously reportedly predicted that ETH would hit $3,400 when the cryptocurrency was trading about $1,200.