Ethereum price (ETHUSD) is up today as traders continue to buy the cryptocurrency ahead of the ETH 2.0 launch in August. The currency, which has outperformed Bitcoin this year, is trading at the highest it has been since June last year. Meanwhile, BTC has spiked to above $11,390, which is the highest it has been since August last year.
There are two primary reasons why Ethereum price is in a sharp rally today. First, it has to do with the upcoming ETH 2.0 launch, which will happen in the coming week. The progress is going on well as developers continue to test and verify the upgrade.
As the first major upgrade of the network, analysts believe that speed and safety will be enhanced. In a recent blog post, the Ethereum Foundation said that it was launching the ETH2 validator testnet. The goal of this validating process is to make it easy for more people to test the network.
Meanwhile, Ethereum price (ETHUSD) is gaining because of the increasing popularity of the DeFi ecosystem. As we wrote yesterday, the Decentralised Finance (DeFi) industry has grown by more than 23% in the past two months. It has attracted almost $4 billion in investments. And today, Augur, the predictive betting company announced that it had deployed its v2 upgrade.
The weekly chart shows that Ethereum price has been in an upward trend for the past three consecutive weeks. Also, it shows that the ETHUSD is trading above the 50-day and 100-day exponential moving averages.
Most importantly, it has managed to move above the important resistance level at $288, which was the highest point on February 2020. Therefore, the pair seems to be targeting the next resistance at $365, which is its highest level on June 2019.
On the other hand, a move below $230 will invalidate this trend. This price is along the 50-day and 100-day exponential moving averages.