Ethereum, the Bitcoin rival, set a new all-time record above $400

On November 23, Ethereum price reached a new all-time high above $400 barrier, currently trading at $400.84 nearly 10% from yesterday, according to the CoinMarketCap.

With its recent surge in price, the market valuation of Ethereum has moved closer to the $40 billion mark, a market cap that is larger than seven of the 10 largest cryptocurrencies in the market combined, with the exception of bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash.

The demand for Ether has been evenly distributed across two major markets, South Korea and the US. South Korea’s Bithumb, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world by trading volume, has accounted for nearly 15 percent of Ether trades over the past 24 hours.

Alternative cryptocurrencies (altcoins) in the market tend to follow the price trend of Ether. As the price of Ether surged from around $380 to $415, other altcoins followed. The vast majority of altcoins in the market recorded significant gains, especially Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, and Monero.

Frank Schuil, the CEO at Safello, one of Europe’s largest bitcoin brokerages and wallet platforms, recently revealed that the Ethereum network has been processing more transactions on a daily basis than the entire cryptocurrency market, including bitcoin.

On average, the Ethereum network settles over 544,000 transactions, which is approximately 52 percent of the cryptocurrency market’s transactions. Bitcoin on average processes 270,000 transactions per day, around 50 percent of the Ethereum network’s daily transaction volume.

The Ethereum network has started to settle more transactions than the Bitcoin network since the execution of the Byzantium hard fork in October. Donald McIntyre, the founder of Etherplan and highly regarded Ethereum analyst, noted that the demand for Ethereum as a settlement network has increased, primarily due to the increase in transaction fees of the Bitcoin network.

However, one of the most important news of this hour is that the second most popular cryptocurrency ‘Ethereum’ is all set to enter derivatives market, according to Coinspeaker.com

An unknown cryptocurrency exchange that is currently been referred by the name “Virtuoso” is said to offer Ethereum futures-contract according to the person who is familiar with this matter. The person also disclosed that one of the co-founders of the exchange will be Sunil Hirani who previously co-founded CDS exchange before selling it to Intercontinental Exchange Inc. in 2008 for nearly half-a-billion-dollars.