Ether Charts New All-Time High as Bitcoin, Shiba Inu Rallies Slow Down

Bitcoin (BTC) continues its topsy-turvy week with a 0.13 percent rise in valuation over the past 24 hours. The world's oldest cryptocurrency opened Thursday's trade at $67,173 (roughly Rs. 50 lakh) on Indian exchange CoinSwitch Kuber as global exchanges like Coinbase and Binance list BTC at around the $62,800 (roughly Rs. 46.7 lakh) mark. Bitcoin investors have yet to rally in November after charting a new all-time high towards the end of October, but the cryptocurrency has been consistently trading at a valuation of above $63,000 (roughly Rs. 47 lakh) suggesting a much-awaited price consolidation.

As Bitcoin's grip on the global crypto dominance loosens, altcoins continue to rise in value. Gadgets 360's cryptocurrency price tracker shows that the second most valuable cryptocurrency in Ether is currently trading at $4,897 (roughly Rs. 3.6 lakh), up by 0.75 percent over the past 24 hours. Ether hit a new all-time high on Wednesday, riding on news of wider blockchain adoption. The token, which underpins the Ethereum blockchain network, rose to as high as $4,643 (roughly Rs. 3.45 lakh) on global exchanges on Wednesday after days of minor gains.

"Ethereum's beacon chain's affair upgrade is off to a flying start which is boosting the Ether price globally. Ethereum blockchain has very strong fundamentals and is widely used in fast-growing Defi and NFT projects, which makes the future of Ether even more promising," says BuyUcoin CEO Shivam Thakral.

"Ether has delivered a stellar return on investments with impressive growth of around 400 percent since the beginning of this year. The recent upgrade will make Ethereum a more secure and resilient network for crypto-related transactions which will further boost investor confidence," Thukral added, reacting to Ether's strong run.

Meanwhile, in the battle of meme coins, both Shiba Inu and Dogecoin witnessed dips — SHIB dipping close to 12 percent, while DOGE fell by 0.64 percent to trade at Rs. 21.58 (roughly $0.29).

Other altcoins have been enjoying a run in the green too with Cardano, Ripple, Tether, and Polkadot all charting considerable gains.

Mainstream cryptocurrency adoption has been driving the market push lately. Factors such as banks adopting crypto, non-fungible tokens (NFT) rising in popularity on virtual gaming platforms, and Bitcoin futures-based ETFs launch in the US have all pushed several blockchain tokens, including Bitcoin and Ether, higher since October.

Smaller tokens too have seen rising interest after Facebook rebranded itself to Meta to focus on building the "metaverse", a shared virtual environment.

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