Crypto Market Shifts Focus to Altcoins as Ethereum Hits New All-Time High of $1,565

Ethereum, the most popular blockchain for hosting smart contracts, saw its native crypto Ether (ETH) record new all-time high of $1,565, reflecting a gain of 11% in the last 24 hours.

Interestingly, in the crypto derivatives market, a lot new ETH call options were opened, implying that traders are expecting the cryptocurrency to rally higher in the days ahead.

While a put option is an equivalent of sell order and call option is an equivalent of buy order, an increase in the number of call option contracts indicates that traders have a bullish view of an asset.

Before Ethereum breached previous high, analysts at Laevitas, a data analysis platform, pointed out that 80% of Deribit’s ETH volume is composed of calls.

On the basis of changes in volume, Laevitas analysts forecast that ETH will rise further. They stated:

In a matter of hours, Ether breached $1,500, representing a fresh all-time high.

During the course of last week, Ether came near all-time high several time, but retraced every time and put the next support level under test.

As the price did not retrace strongly after testing the earlier all-time peak implies that the selling pressure has decreased. Therefore, on the fourth-attempt, the resistance level was broken.

In this regard, Su Zhu, CEO of Three Arrows Capital, stated that Ether’s buying momentum is so high that even if a crypto investor had sold BTH to ETH at $41,000 level, the investor would have profited more than selling against the BTC/USD pair.

Traders state that if the daily candle in Ether price chart closes over $1,440, it would re-affirm the bullish uptrend. A trader with nickname “Trader Koz” opined:

Academics at IntoTheBlock echoed a similar view. After Ether went past $1,500 for the first time, academics stated that on-chain activity has increased to January 2018 level.