The start of 2017 has kicked off with a strong performance from a number of the biggest coins in the market. Ethereum, after a prolonged lull in price, took its largest one-day gain in 6 months, and a “little known” coin called Monero, continued a very strong rally after a couple of years of relative dormancy. Stealing the show of course, has been Bitcoin, which after nearing its 2013 all-time-high (on less dramatic terms) has demonstrated itself as a legitimate global store of value.

Monero’s value is arguably being driven by fall-out from Bitcoin’s highly reported price increase, but the cause of Ethereum’s price increase has not been so clear. Ethereum is generally not considered a store of value, and predictions for Ethereum’s future center on its computational ability and transactional capabilities – certainly not “digital gold”. That being said, Ethereum is facing a number of dramatic improvements in 2017, including the new proof of stake algorithm (dubbed “Casper”) as well as the release of Metropolis – the Ethereum release which aims to make the network accessible to non-technical and mainstream users.

It is unlikely that Ethereum’s price is the result of the “currency wars“, but such an increase in attention for crypto in general can only be a good thing.