Investing.com - Ethereum, the world's second-largest cryptocurrency by market value, hit a fresh record high on Tuesday, as its strong rally continued with investors looking beyond the most prominent cryptocurrency bitcoin.
Ethereum hit an all-time high of $1,249.50 on the Bitfinex exchange and was trading at $1,227.20 by 04:54 AM ET (09:54 GMT), up around 10% from its last close.
It is currently the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, after being temporarily knocked into third place by Ripple's XRP token last week. Its market cap rose above $100 billion for the first time last Thursday.
Ethereum’s string of record highs comes as investors are looking at alternative digital currencies beyond bitcoin.
Bitcoin was trading at $14,888.00 on the Bitfinex exchange after losing 7.8% on Monday.
Digital currencies fell broadly on Monday after website CoinMarketCap unexpectedly moved to exclude prices from South Korean exchanges from its calculations of digital currency rates.
Ripple's XRP token was down around 5.5% to $2.350 on the Poloinex exchange after tumbling 13.36% on Monday.
On January 4 Ripple hit a record high of $3.28 and currently has a market cap of around $94 billion, making it the third most valuable digital currency.
Ripple rose in value by more than 32,000% over the course of 2017. Ripple’s gains in 2017 outstripped the gains of Ethereum and bitcoin, which rose by roughly 9,000% and 1,400%, respectively.
Bitcoin rose as high as $19,891 on 17 December on Bitfinex and to more than $20,000 on other exchanges. However, from its all-time high, the price dropped by almost half over the rest of the month before rebounding.
Despite its rocky end to 2017 bitcoin is still the largest cryptocurrency by market cap, with a market value of about $257 billion.