While everyone in the cryptocurrencies sphere was focusing on the crash in the price of bitcoin, due to core developer Mike Hearn quitting the community and branding it a failed experiment, another drama has started unfolding.

Ethereum’s cryptocurrency, Ether, has steadily advanced its position in the crypto trading markets. The price of Ether increased by almost 37% over the past week and jumped about 13% in the last twenty-four hours alone to just above 0.0037 BTC ($1.40), thus further strengthening its position as the fourth biggest cryptocurrency by market capitalization.

Litecoin, probably the most widely known cryptocurrency after bitcoin, now has a market cap of just over $131 million after its price fell almost 16% in the last twenty-four hours to about 0.007889 BTC ($2.99). In contrast to the weakening LTC, Ether’s market capitalization now reaches an impressive $107 million. Considering that Ether’s market capitalization was just $39 million in August 2015, and only crossed $90 million last week, it can be expected to overtake Litecoin soon to become the third biggest crypto by market capitalization behind Bitcoin and Ripple if current trend continue.

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Another milestone reached by Ether today is that for the first time ever its daily trading volume passed that of Litcoin reaching $1,905,030 compared with just $1,353,920 for LTC trading in the last twenty-four hours.

Sometimes called Bitcoin 2.0 or Bitcoin 3.0, Ethereum proponents see it as much more than just a cryptocurrency system as per the original idea of Satoshi Nakamoto. It is instead referred to as a “planetary scale computer” that can handle everything from secure communication and e-commerce, to digital governance, the internet of things and much more.