January 19 will forever be remembered by Ethereum bulls as the day Ether (ETH) surpassed its previous all-time high in 2018. The second-largest cryptocurrency has been on the rise since December last year, raising hopes that the cryptocurrency is going to make a new high soon. This remained a prediction until today, where Ether reached a new high at over US$1,437 across different digital currency exchanges.
The new high brought the crypto’s market capitalization to over US$160 billion. Amid the crypto surge, there’s also a rush in the Ether futures market, as open interest has risen to a new record level as well.
Ether Futures Sets new ATH
There is currently about US$4.61 billion open interest in Ether, according to the market data from ByBt. Over the past 24 hours, the open interest surged by 34 percent. The leading cryptocurrency exchange, Binance, dominates the ETH futures market with a total valuation of US$1.13 billion open interest. Huobi follows Binance exchange with US$694.55 million open interest in Ethereum.
Other derivative exchanges with a sizable amount of open interest include OKEx (US$691.4 million), Bybit (US$663.78 million), and FTX exchange (US$631.27 million). Bitfinex, BitMEX, Deribit, Kraken, and Gate have a combined valuation of US$794.9 million open interest in Ether futures.
Demand for ETH is Rising
There is a steadily growing demand for the second-largest digital currency, which is probably one of the factors contributing to the price increase. Decentralized Finance (DeFi) activities are gradually peaking up, causing more coins to leave the centralized exchanges (CEXs). Just before ETH’s new ATH, Messari researcher Ryan Watkins reported that the daily transaction volume on Ethereum had increased significantly, to the extent it surpasses Bitcoin transaction volume.