This week has been all about Ethereum so far. With its big brother appearing to run out of steam and the consolidation continuing, ETH could be about to decouple in terms of price action as the fundamentals keep improving.
Cryptocurrency payments provider BitPay has announced support for Ethereum payments, further adding to the bullish momentum that the world’s second-largest crypto asset is enjoying this week.
Seamless Ethereum payments
According to the press release businesses using the platform can now accept payments in Ethereum without the need for any integration or enhancements.
Additionally, there will be a wallet added for ETH storage and the asset will be available on the prepaid crypto debit card issued by BitPay.
Stephen Pair, CEO of BitPay, stated:
“As one of the largest cryptocurrencies by market cap and one used by thousands of companies, Ethereum is the next logical choice.”
BitPay currently offers payments in Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash and a number of stablecoins including Circle’s USDC, Gemini’s GUSD, and Paxos.
Founded in 2011, it offers 12 fiat currencies with bank deposits in 37 countries.
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin was also pleased with the news, adding:
“It is exciting to see BitPay leading the way in integrating Ethereum into global payment systems.
“This truly opens up a new world of possibilities for the Ethereum ecosystem, and together we can continue to be a leading innovator for real-world use cases for cryptocurrencies.”
Ethereum has been on the receiving end of a bit of a bashing in recent weeks due to its poor price performance and the fact that it is still 85% down from its peak.
Several industry observers have labeled the past 18 months Ethereum’s first major bear market.
Competing projects are also quick to lambaste the network due to its performance issues but the bottom line is that they too are at rock bottom in terms of prices.
In terms of developers and distribution, Ethereum competitors such as EOS, Cardano, and Tron simply cannot compete so the time for an ETH recovery may be just around the corner.
Solid fundamentals
There have been a number of other fundamentally positive developments for Ethereum over the past week or so which could be driving its current price action.
Spanish banking giant Santander put its trust in the network by issuing and settling a $20 million bond on the Ethereum blockchain last week.
There have been a number of developments in the DeFi ecosystem and Dai which is heavily ETH dependent.
The dYdX trading platform has launched a native ETH-DAI market furthering decentralized finance options for the fledgling industry.
Bigger news was the successful networking of a number of ETH 2.0 clients in the eth2interop test run last week.
This was the last major hurdle before clients focus on optimizations, auditing, and UX in preparation for launch.
Ethereum price action
All of these bullish factors have been good for Ethereum prices which are finally beginning to drag themselves off the floor.
Since the weekend ETH has climbed 11% to reach the psychological $200 level today.
Further gains are looking likely as the fundamentals strengthen and hope returns that Ethereum can finally decouple from its big brother.