Although the coronavirus outbreak had a significant impact on the crypto market, cryptocurrencies bounced back faster than other financial investments and quickly regained their pre-COVID-19 levels. As an inflation hedge during the coronavirus crisis, they continued drawing a lot of attention from investors.
According to data presented by AksjeBloggen.com, Ethereum was the most traded cryptocurrency in the second quarter of 2020, with over 866,000 average daily transactions, almost three times more than Bitcoin.
Ethereum price jumped by 135% since January
Cryptocurrencies are digital currencies which owe credibility to their technology rather than a central bank. Many of their daily transactions involve cryptocurrency exchanges that exchange digital coins for other currencies, including traditional currencies like U.S. dollars or euros.
As the leading cryptocurrency in terms of price and market capitalization, Bitcoin reached an average of 296,620 daily transactions in the second quarter of 2020, revealed CoinMetrics and Statista data.
Other leading cryptocurrencies saw less than a tenth of the daily volume of Ethereum. Bitcoin Cash had over 34,000 average daily transactions in the second quarter of the year. Litecoin, Dash, and Monero followed with 30,200, 24,600, and 12,180 daily transactions, respectively.
Statistics also show the Ethereum price surged since the beginning of the year. In January, the value of the third most expensive cryptocurrency globally stood at $181.73. After a plunge to a $133.76 caused by the COVID-19 crash in March, Ethereum price quickly recovered and continued rising ever since. Last week it stood at $425.25, a 135% jump since January.
Ethereum market cap surged by 232% in 2020
Besides ranking as the cryptocurrency with the highest number of average daily transactions in the second quarter of 2020, the last few months have witnessed a significant growth of Ethereum market capitalization.
At the end of December 2019, the Ethereum market cap stood at $14.4bn, revealed CoinMarketCap data. In the next two months, this figure rose to $29.5bn. After the COVID-19 crash, the market cap of the third leading cryptocurrency globally stumbled to $11.6bn. However, this value rose by $36.1bn since March, reaching $47.8bn last week. Statistics show the Ethereum market cap surged by 232% since the beginning of the year.
What is Ethereum?
Ethereum is the second-largest cryptocurrency platform by market capitalization, behind Bitcoin. It is a decentralised open source blockchain featuring smart contract functionality. Ether is the cryptocurrency generated by Ethereum miners as a reward for computations performed to secure the blockchain.
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