ETH/USD: Ether Breaks $4,100 to Hit Three-Year Top. Record High Is Less Than 20% Away.

Second-largest crypto is hot to the touch after it added more than 4% on Monday and got traders excited about breaking the all-time high.

• Ether prices ETHUSD enjoyed a nice pump to kick off the trading week, vaulting past $4,000 and marking a fresh three-year high of $4,120 per token. The cryptocurrency rallied together with its big bro Bitcoin, which hit a record of $107,000 amid speculation over a Bitcoin strategic reserve. Ether, the second-largest digital asset, has been lagging behind the orange coin this year, up about 80% against Bitcoin’s 140% pop.
• Ether is largely a technical token handling the layer-1 Ethereum blockchain’s transactions so that users can build decentralized applications (dApps) and create funny-looking non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Bitcoin, on the other hand, has carved out a reputation for itself as an investment asset with a valuation of about $2.1 trillion, or about $300 billion less than tech heavyweight Alphabet, which soared to a record on Monday.
• Still, Ether is slowly making its way to Wall Street and into the portfolios of ordinary investors through the launch of its own exchange-traded funds (ETFs). Earlier this year, the Securities and Exchange Commission greenlighted nine vehicles to hold genuine Ether. These have now amassed about $15 billion in assets. Bitcoin’s ETFs, in comparison, have pulled in more than $100 billion in net new money since their January launch.