Ethereum Market Update: ETH/USD jumps above $300.00 amid skyrocketing options trading volumes

Ethereum, the second-largest digital asset, hit jumped above $300.00 for the first time since December 2019. ETH/USD hit the recent high at $309.52 and retreated to $306.55 by press time. The coin has gained over 7% in the recent 24 hours and over 30% on a week-on-week basis. 

What's going on

Ethereum (ETH) options trading volume reached a new all-time high amid the explosive growth of retail trading activity, according to the recent data, provided by Deribit Insights. The research arm of the top options exchange wrote on Twitter:

ETH option volumes break all-time notional value highs, with 3:2 Call:Puts traded, 1m vol jumps from 52% to 67%, Call skew indicating upside Calls in demand across maturities. BTC 1m vol at 50%, and has not justified the same response, as ETH spot massively outperformed BTC.

Earlier, the FXStreet reported that ETH developers moved fast with ETH 2.0 launch and asked the community to test its hack-resistance.

ETH/USD: Technical picture

On the daily charts, ETH/USD jumped above the upper line of the Bollinger Band at $295.70. Now, this technical level serves as local support and an initial correction target. If it is broken, the sell-off may be extended towards 1-hour SMA50 at $287.00 and to daily SMA50 at $252.00. The RSI on the daily chart has started reversing from an overbought territory; however, the downside momentum may be limited.

On the upside, once the price is above the recent high of $309.59, we are mostly on uncharted territory with the next potential resistance as high as $350.00. 

ETH/USD daily chart