Positive global sentiment spurs bitcoin past $3,000 and Ethereum appreciates by 5000% since January 2017

This work week started with cryptocurrency, bitcoin, reaching an all-time high of 3000 dollars. Amidst positive global adoption, bitcoins have seen a 300% increase in value over the last one year. The same day another cryptocurrency, ether, exceeded an all-time high of 400 dollars, climbing more than 5000%. According to Vanity Fair, ether was selling at 7.98 dollars at the beginning of 2017.

In the recent past, countries around the world including, Japan, Russia and Australia have shown greater acceptance of cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin has been around for a while but ether just came out of nowhere. Ether and its blockchain, Ethereum was launched only in July 2015. Vladimir Putin has already had a friendly chit chat with the founder of the Ethereum Project at the St Petersburg International Economic Forum. Russian banks are contemplating using Ethereum blockchain technology to digitalize the country’s financial transactions; ditto for the Singaporean government while Japan is drafting new rules to make Ethereum and its token, ether a valid part of the monetary system.

Here’s something from CoinDesk: "The inflows into 'alts' [alternative digital assets] are greater than those into bitcoin. In other words, bitcoin is growing at a very nice pace, but non-bitcoin cryptocurrencies are growing even faster," cryptocurrency hedge fund manager Tim Enneking had told the web portal reporting on digital currencies.

Ethereum attempts to solve many of the hitches bitcoin and its blockchain has. The most obvious one is that it transactions (or blocks) can be completed on Ethereum in 12 seconds and on blockchain it takes 10 minutes.

Hold on to your horses though. Here’s more from CoinDesk: Fintech investor Sean Walsh had told the online media portal, "Bitcoin still seems like the dominant gateway to [alternative digital assets]. So, many first purchase bitcoin in order to then trade their bitcoin for altcoins."

Bitcoin has a market cap over 45 billion dollars and Ethereum’s market cap around 10 billion dollars under that. On CoinDesk, exchange rates showed bitcoin prices on the rise as Ethereum prices depreciating. According to details shred by Zebpay, an Indian bitcoin company, Australia has declared that it will accept bitcoins as legal currency from July 2017 and exempted from goods and service tax, while Russia is planning to adopt bitcoin as a legal payment method in 2018.

Closer to home, the demand for bitcoins in India is rising exponentially with Indians actively exploring bitcoins as an alternative investment option, Team Zebpay believes. Recently, the Indian government set up a committee to study the virtual currencies including bitcoins and deliberate guidelines while State Bank of India, ICICI Bank, DCB Bank among a 20 member BankChain consortium has just announced plans to start R&D for using blockchain technology in India’s banking sector.

Zebpay has crossed 500,000 downloads and is adding 4,500 users every day. Commenting on the adoption of bitcoins in India, Sandeep Goenka, cofounder and COO of Zebpay said, “Trade volumes at Zebpay are significant for India but still tiny compared to global trade volume of rupees 20,000 crores per day. While it is encouraging to see growth in bitcoins adoption and scale, we are still at the tip of the iceberg vis-à-vis globally large trade volume. Nevertheless, we remain optimistic about the growth potential of bitcoin globally and in India as an emerging asset class.”