ETHEREUM ALL-TIME HIGH

Ethereum reaches an ATH amid its soaring demand as collateral in DeFi

Different fundamentals are at play for the second-largest crypto when it comes to the recent price gains

We have only been three weeks into 2021 and already it has broken some records for the Crypto market — Bitcoin posted an all-time high (ATH) of almost $42k on Jan. 07, followed by Ether charting its ATH around $1440 on Jan. 18 and now the total value locked (TVL) in Defi assets crossed the $25 billion mark. Interestingly, the last two are a little more correlated than the first one.

Let me explain how. The second-largest crypto is primarily used as a collateral asset for borrowing & lending in the decentralized finance (DeFi) market, apart from being the primary home base for smart contracts & decentralized applications (dApps). It is this unique set of use cases that drives the interest of investors and traders in ETH.

It was only recently that I wrote about how it was Ethereum’s turn to climb higher. And one of the reasons mentioned was the Defi boom that has taken shape in the past 12 months or so. Although there is no denying the fact that Bitcoin drives the broader crypto market, we are also seeing divergent use case narrative play out in…