Ether Rallies to $3.6K as Bitcoin Holds Steady at $71K
Ether (ETH) prices increased to $3600 during the early hours of the East Asia trading day, while Bitcoin (BTC) remained stable around $71,000. The CoinDesk 20, a measure of the world's most liquid digital assets, rose by 3.5% and traded above 2,600. Decentralized liquid staking protocols like Lido DAO and Rocket Pool ETH saw their tokens increase by 10% and 8% respectively. The rise in ETH's performance is attributed to continued market interest in decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol Ethena, which has seen its total value locked (TVL) cross the $2.2 billion mark. Ethena's USDe synthetic stablecoin recently added bitcoin as collateral. The rally may be based on token demand rather than the expectation of an ether spot exchange-traded fund being approved soon. Bettors on Polymarket see a 16% chance of a spot ether ETF being approved in the U.S. by the end of May and a 45% chance by the end of June.
