A look at Ether, which has risen 4,500% since the beginning of the year, is used in ICOs, and is likely to pass Bitcoin's total value soon
The price of Bitcoin has hit record highs in recent months, more than doubling in price since the start of the year.
Context & Ripple Effects
This is the second act of a run the Times had already flagged: a year earlier, Ethereum had climbed 1,000% in three months past $1B in value while drawing interest from JPMorgan Chase, Microsoft, and IBM (Ethereum's 2016 climb). What changed by mid-2017 is the driver — ether is now the required currency for launching ICOs, giving it a demand engine tied to deal flow rather than speculation alone.
The stakes in the piece are the 'flippening': ether closing in on Bitcoin's total value just as Bitcoin itself more than doubles off record highs. Later coverage shows how that race resolved — ether set records of its own in 2021 ($4,141.99 and a $476B market cap) and again in 2025 near $4,885, but Bitcoin's 2025 all-time high above $122,000 kept it decisively ahead (Bitcoin's $122K record).
First-order effects
- ICOs become ether's primary use case: every new token sale must be bought with ether, so fundraising volume converts directly into buying pressure on the asset.
- Bitcoin holders face a credible rival for the 'dominant crypto' position for the first time, with ether's total value approaching Bitcoin's.
Second-order effects
- Enterprise interest documented in the prior coverage — JPMorgan Chase, Microsoft, IBM — gets a financial-market validation layer, making blockchain pilots easier to fund and staff.
- A wave of ICO issuance denominated in ether creates a feedback loop where each successful sale raises the price of the very asset needed to launch the next one.
Third-order effects
- The predicted flip never lands: across eight years of subsequent coverage, ether repeatedly sets records but Bitcoin retains the larger total value, establishing a durable two-tier structure with Bitcoin as the store-of-value leader and ether as the application-layer asset.
- ICO-driven valuation becomes the template for crypto cycles — utility narratives repeatedly push ether toward parity, and repeatedly fall short, a pattern visible again in the 2021 and 2025 records.
The trend: Crypto markets have settled into a persistent hierarchy in which ether's utility-driven rallies challenge but never displace Bitcoin's lead, with each cycle re-running the 2017 flippening question.