Ethereum Futures Launched On CME Boost The ETH Price To $1,820

The second-largest cryptocurrency to date, Ethereum, bounced back from its weekly low of $1,501.75 only to record another all-time high following CME’s Ethereum Futures contracts launch. The altcoin leader reached a new ATH of $1,831.52 just three days after the announcement, before settling around $1,783.26 as of press time.

CME Group launched the Ethereum Futures contracts on Monday, February 8, with a total of 388 ETH contracts traded on the first day. The contracts recorded a total volume of $33.6 million.

The recent CME launch shows an ever-increasing institutional interest among the big players in traditional finance. Grayscale, the world’s largest crypto asset manager, made an Ethereum purchasing spree of 12,450 Ethereum in just 24 hours, which made the total number of Grayscale’s ETH under management spike above 3.05 million.

Given the current Ethereum prices, Grayscale’s Ethereum Trust is currently worth over $5.4 billion. Also, Grayscale added approximately 96,199 ETH in its trust in the last 7 days.

However, CME’s Ethereum Futures contracts gave institutional investors a new medium for trading Ethereum without actually owning it. For now, 2021 marks a great institutional interest towards Ethereum, as large-scale crypto asset management companies noting that institutional investors have an increased interest in Ethereum-related products and services, including DeFi.

Crypto asset management company CoinShare even reported that 80% of the total fresh monetary inflow is caused by Bitcoin’s runner-up, Ethereum. However, the ever-increasing transaction costs for Ethereum users are still high, reaching $26.25 for an ERC-20 transfer. Uniswap and Tether are among the biggest gas guzzlers, responsible for $6,111,791.14 and $3,097,735.98 in 24-hour gas fees, respectively.

Despite the gas fee crisis, Ethereum is showing no signs of slowing down, as both the overall network activity and usage remain high. Furthermore, Ethereum now moves more value on its network than the industry leader – Bitcoin.

Ethereum supporter Ryan Sean Adams noted that “they say reserve currency status is the last to fall when an economic power gets out-competed.”

However, the gas crisis may soon come to an end. As Cryptobrowser.io reported, Ethereum developers are working on Ethereum Improvement Proposal 1559 (EIP-1559), which would transform Ethereum’s fee market.

The improvement proposal would redirect gas fees from miners back to ETH holders by introducing burning one portion of it. The news about the improvement proposal come amid a record Ethereum mining revenue of over $48 million at the time of writing. However, those numbers are still under the all-time high in miner revenue on Ethereum of $50,5 million in December 2017.