The world’s second-largest digital currency by market value surged to a fresh record of $2,800 on Thursday morning, according to data from Coin Metrics.
It has still had a stunning rally, though, climbing almost 90% so far this year, on the back of increased interest from institutional investors and corporate buyers like Tesla.
At the same time, some investors have warned of froth in the crypto market.
And plenty of other “altcoins,” or alternative currencies, have also rallied this year.
“There’s just so much hype from the institutions coming in,” Carol Alexander, professor at the University of Sussex Business School, told CNBC last week.
“Having said that, on the more retail side that used to be in bitcoin, it’s not cool anymore,” Alexander added.
Skeptics of cryptocurrencies say that bitcoin and other digital coins are a speculative bubble.
One popular trend in the so-called decentralized app space is NFTs, or nonfungible tokens, digital assets meant to represent ownership of rare virtual items like art and sports memorabilia.
Ethereum is also going through a major upgrade that will push it further from bitcoin, in theory allowing for faster transaction times and reducing the amount of power required to process transactions.