Ethereum on a high after European Investment Bank’s $121M digital bond news

Ether (ETH) prices skyrocketed to a new all-time high on Wednesday on the back of positive news from the European Investment Bank.

Ether has climbed to $2,709 early during trading in Asia on Wednesday, marking a new peak price for the asset, according to CoinGecko.

The crypto metrics provider reports a gain of 7% over the past 24 hours, and 15.7% over the past seven days for the world’s second-largest digital asset by market capitalization. The move has pushed the ETH market cap to a record $312 billion.

While there are a range of factors propelling Ether’s price, Reuters today attributed it to the news that the European Investment Bank is launching a “digital bond” sale using the Ethereum network.

The EIB is issuing a two-year 100-million-euro ($120.8 million) digital bond, with the sale to be led by Goldman Sachs, Banco Santander and Societe Generale, according to analysts at Bloomberg.

European Investment Bank is issuing 2 year digital bonds on Ethereum through Goldman, Santander, and Societe. Wow. @GoldmanSachs #Ethereum @RaoulGMI pic.twitter.com/kaQIrZ9C9V

— Michael Tant (@MichaelTant3) April 27, 2021

On Friday, Societe Generale announced that its subsidiary, Societe Generale SFH, had issued a 100-million-euro bond as a security token on the public Ethereum blockchain. It was awarded the top triple-A rating by Moody’s and Fitch.

Danny Kim, head of revenue at crypto broker SFOX, told Reuters that the news has demonstrated a bullish institutional use case for Ethereum, adding that exchange balances are also decreasing, which adds m to the bull case:

“The amount of Ethereum sitting on exchanges continues to drop lower and has been the lowest in the past year. With less supply on exchange available, there’s less likely a chance of a major sell-off.”

If you are not extremely long $ETH and Web3 at this point, it will probably be a rough decade for youTradfi banks beginning to issue digital bonds on ETH is unbelievable

— Sisyphus (@0xSisyphus) April 27, 2021

As reported by Cointelegraph, a revival in DeFi-related protocols and tokens, coupled with a fall in gas prices, could also be driving momentum. At the time of writing, the average transaction price on the network had fallen to $10.73, according to BitInfoCharts.

Popular crypto analyst Altcoin Sherpa, meanwhile, predicted that ETH would continue to outperform Bitcoin (BTC) in the coming weeks, targeting a price of $3,000.

$ETH: Still think this 1 outperforms BTC in the coming weeks, $3000+ is inevitable. Waiting for the BTC bottom to form (wherever that is) and then take off. #Ethereum $ETHUSD pic.twitter.com/wdFUG0Nkui

— Altcoin Sherpa (@AltcoinSherpa) April 28, 2021