Wow! Ethereum has now passed up $3,000. This is one of my favorite altcoins, and holds nostalgic value for me. It’s surprising that Ethereum has shot up so much independently of Bitcoin. For a long time, Bitcoin set the trend, altcoins would follow its course. If Bitcoin goes up 2% major altcoins go up 10%. Obviously this isn’t always the case, but a trend I’ve noticed to be true more often than not. Lately, this has not applied. Ethereum has made leaps and bounds while Bitcoin has gone down.

*ETHEREUM CLIMBS ABOVE $3,200 FOR THE FIRST TIME IN HISTORY #ETH 🚀🚀 pic.twitter.com/XDsslHjW8X

— Investing.com (@Investingcom) May 3, 2021

This One Time In Spain..

Back in early 2017, I finished off a European tour with 3 weeks on the beautiful Spanish island of Mallorca. I took every advantage of Mediterranean island life in that time, spending my days laying on the beach, swimming, jet skiing, eating amazing food, and…studying.

I was already familiar with Bitcoin at this point, but I had never ventured into altcoins. Of course, Ethereum at that time was already the number 2 cryptocurrency and is probably even more important than Bitcoin, due to the fact that it serves as the foundation for most other altcoins. After learning about Ethereum, and opening a Binance account to start trading, I placed my first order.

In early 2017, I bought 50 Ethereum for (drumroll please…) $400. That’s right, about $8 a pop. At today’s rate of $3,300 those 50 coins would be worth an astonishing $165,000. Unfortunately I don’t still have those original 50, but I can’t really complain because I sold them off at their previous height of $1,000 in 2019 at a time I really needed some emergency funds. $50,000 off of $400 in under 2 years is nothing to sneer at!

Why Ethereum Is So Valuable

Ethereum was created in 2015 by Russian entrepreneur Vitalik Buterin. Now that Ethereum has surpassed $3,000, its 27 year old founder Buterin has become the youngest crypto billionaire in the world. He holds somewhere around 333,000 Ethereum, 1.1 billion worth in USD as of the time I’m writing this.

One of the primary reasons for Ethereum’s popularity and meteoric rise is that it serves as a sort of base or foundation for both decentralized finance (DeFi) and non-fungible (NFTs) tokens. Ethereum also surpasses Bitcoin in terms of activity, it’s blockchain is the most active out of any cryptocurrency.

Where Will Ethereum Go From Here?

In the words of Biggie Smalls, the sky is the limit. Being that Ethereum has already risen 320% in 2021, it’s probably a safe bet to say it will be worth much more by 2022. Some analysts even speculate that ethereum will hit $5,000 this week.

How To Buy Ethereum

If you’re debating a jump onto the crypto bandwagon, Ethereum is a solid buy. It might be tempting to buy all sorts of altcoins, but unless you’re really going to devote some time into researching and watching everything you should probably just stick with the major tokens. Buying Ethereum is easy, there are a number of legitimate services out there these days. The thing is, most of these are very expensive. Coinbase? Huge fees. Crypto ATM? Absolutely forget it, ridiculous fees! I recommend you go with one of the following two services.

Binance

Binance charges minimal fees, it has different interfaces for novice and advanced traders, and, one of the best features: stop-loss. You can set a stop-loss to automatically sell off whatever crypto you’re holding if it drops below a specified value. Conversely, you can set up an automatic buy should a crypto reach a predetermined value.

Sign up for Binance

Paxful

Paxful is a whole other animal. Whereas Binance is a centralized trading platform, Paxful is strictly a peer to peer service. They essentially play the role of match maker between buyer and seller, and take a small (1%) cut for the hookup.

A word to the wise: any peer to peer service from eBay to Craigslist to OfferUp to Paxful, will have scammers. Lots of scammers. This is relatively easy to avoid, however. Just look at the users rating. If someone is offering $1.80 on the dollar and has 3 reviews, it’s probably a scam. If someone is offering $1.01 on the dollar and has 4,500 reviews, you’re safe.

I personally use Paxful to sell crypto rather than to buy. Usually I sell for payment via Cash App, Zelle, or Apple Pay. I’ve never had any issues with this.

Sign up for Paxful