In the past 24 hours, Ethereum’s price surged by 18.8%, surpassing $2300. Bitcoin has firmly held above $103,000.
Among the top 10 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization, Ethereum showed the best performance. Crypto trader Daan Crypto Trades described the asset’s daily candle as “absolutely insane.”
The volume of liquidations over the day amounted to nearly $880 million. Of this total, $344 million was in Bitcoin and $289 million in Ethereum.
According to trader and economist Alex Krüger, the movement of digital gold above $99,000 primarily led to the closing of short positions. He attributed Ethereum’s dynamics to the opening of new long positions in the asset.
This move on $BTC since upper 99ks largely driven by shorts getting liquidated or closing. $ETH is different, that’s mainly new longs. pic.twitter.com/Ilb1eFJCrE
— Alex Krüger (@krugermacro) May 8, 2025
On May 7, the Ethereum mainnet underwent the Pectra hard fork. The largest update by number of proposals included a series of improvements aimed at enhancing the blockchain’s convenience and efficiency.
Following the upgrade, the network began burning ETH more rapidly. The annual deflation rate reached 1.2%.
In a comment to Cointelegraph, Derive protocol founder Nick Foster noted that Ethereum’s growth was driven by several factors, not just Pectra. He pointed to favorable events for digital assets such as the US-UK trade agreement and Coinbase’s acquisition of the Deribit options platform for $2.9 billion.
The cryptocurrency market capitalization increased by 4.5% in a day, reaching $3.37 trillion. Bitcoin’s dominance stands at 61%.
Digital gold has surpassed Amazon in total value, becoming the fifth-largest asset in the world, as noted by Bitcoin Magazine.
JUST IN: #Bitcoin surpassed Amazon to become the 5the largest asset in the world ? pic.twitter.com/9j2XCLyQvC
— Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) May 8, 2025
Binance founder Changpeng Zhao predicted that Bitcoin could reach $1 million in the current market cycle.