Ethereum has hit a three and a half year high against Bitcoin, raising hopes in the Ethereum community that the smart contract platform could one day unseat BTC as the biggest cryptocurrency.

Ethereum was trading for 0.082842 BTC, its highest level since May 2018. (Looked at another way, one Bitcoin would buy just 12.07 Ethereum).

While the two cryptos generally move more or less in a similar fashion, at 4pm AEDT Bitcoin was flat at US$57,167 while Ether was up 6.5 per cent to US$4,737.

There’s only been about six months in Ethereum’s six and a half year history when Ethereum has traded as high against Bitcoin as it is currently.

ETH/BTC trading on Binance. (Stockehead/Tradingview)

Ethereum would need to roughly double in value against Bitcoin to move past it in the coin rankings, a hypothetical event that Ethereum fans have a name for – the flippening.

Some see that as potentially happening as soon as next year, once Ethereum launches its “2.0 upgrade” and moves to proof-of-stake.

Crypto market up 1.4%

Overall the crypto market this afternoon was at US$2.64 trillion, up 1.43 per cent from yesterday.

About a third of the top 100 coins were in the red, but most modestly. The biggest decliner was e-commerce blockchain WAX, down 6.4 per cent. OMG and Harmony had dipped around five per cent.

Coingecko

Stacks was the biggest gainer in the top 100, rising 34.5 per cent to US$3.12, and had earlier hit an all-time high of US$3.39. It’s an interesting move, given Bitcoin’s lagging performance. The Stacks platform is designed to bring Ethereum-style smart contracts to Bitcoin’s base layer blockchain.

Voyager Token was up by 25 per cent, to US$5.07, and Uniswap and THORChain had both posted about 10 per cent gains.

Among smaller coins, Divi, RMRK, Mobox, Avalanche launchpad Avalaunch, FLEX Coin and gaming guild Merit Circle had all hit all-time highs this afternoon.