And then, whoosh! it all happened at once. In under an hour, late on Wednesday night, the price of Ethereum, the second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, rose from $245 to $269, an increase of 9.7%.

Bitcoin, as well as Bitcoin Cash, TRON, and XRP, followed, although their 24 hour increases werent nearly as sharp. Bitcoin, which followed the same upward trajectory, rose from $9,377 to $9,516, an increase of 1.48%.

The pumpso far without much of a dumpstarted at around 11 pm UK time. Then, the price started rising ever so slightly, from $245 to $247, a price unseen since July 13. The real pumpa crude, straight line pointing upward with barely any gradientoccurred at around 11.30 pm UK time. The price then plateaued.

This is Ethereums highest price since February. Then in March, the pandemic swept through the US; when global markets took a beating, so did the entire crypto market. Ethereum crashed to the lowest point its been this year: $95.

If the price keeps rising, this could be a big day for Bitcoin, too. Bitcoin has been struggling to push past the elusive $10,000 price pointits price before the pandemic hit. But for the past two months, Bitcoins been incredibly, frustratingly stable.

In a recent report, Coin Metrics found that Bitcoins price had budged just 1% in the past month and that it hadnt been this stable since 2018.

The CEO of crypto exchange Binance, Changpeng Zhao, even remarked in an interview with Bloomberg earlier this week that some had started to call Bitcoin a stablecoin, referring to those coins whose value is pegged to a fiat currency, like the US dollar.

Meanwhile, Ethereum has been having a moment, thanks to the growing frenzy around DeFi, and yield farming in particular. The platform is celebrating its anniversary next week and the much-anticipated Ethereum 2.0 upgrade, which will improve the speed and capacity of the network, is on track to roll out by November.

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The big pump: ETH and BTC soar - Decrypt