Ether (ETH), the 2d virtually-valued cryptocurrency after Bitcoin (BTC), has striking a major milestone amid the ongoing price rally.

On Wed, Ether'southward price set another historic record, surging to as high as $4,346, co-ordinate to data from CoinMarketCap. Ethers market capitalization briefly surpassed $500 billion, reaching nearly $505 billion on Wednesday.

The new milestone marks Ether's ongoing massive surge after it surpassed the $iv,000 toll marking for the first time in its history on Monday. At the time of writing, ETH is trading at $4,317, up more than 6.iv% over the by 24 hours and seeing massive gains of near xxx% over the by vii days.

Ether market place cap 24-hour nautical chart. Source: CoinMarketCap

Post-obit the parabolic surge, Ether is now larger than payments behemothic Visa or major investment bank JPMorgan in terms of market capitalization. At publishing time, Visa'southward market valuation amounts to $481 billion, while JPMorgan's market cap stands at $488 billion, according to data from financial data website MarketWatch.

Ether is the second cryptocurrency to hit a $500-billion market cap afterward Bitcoin. Ether took significantly less time to become a half-a-trillion-dollar asset. Launched in January 2009, Bitcoin took nearly 12 years to reach a $500-billion marketplace capitalization in December 2020 at a cost above $27,000. Equally the first version of an Ethereum cryptocurrency protocol was launched in July 2015, Ether is now 5 years and ten months old.

As previously reported by Cointelegraph, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin became a billionaire after Ether's price rose above $3,000 on May 3. Megan Kaspar, a crypto annotator and co-founder of digital asset investment firm Magnetic, believes that Ether is now on rail to hitting a price target betwixt $8,000 and $10,000 by belatedly 2021. The annotator previously reportedly predicted that ETH would hit $iii,400 when the cryptocurrency was trading well-nigh $1,200.