Ether scales $4,600 to record high, bitcoin trails

Bitcoin (BTC) was trading around $63,078 and is up about 117% this year, while ether is up six-fold.

"Since the market reversal at the end of September, ether's strength has been moving in stride with BTC and other majors," said Ryan Rabaglia, managing director and global head of trading at digital asset platform OSL.

"Ethereum has been the clear winner of the Layer-1s for what we believe will be a substantial shift in a potentially prolonged market sentiment uplift. Ethereum will also continue to play a major role in the NFT and metaverse ecosystem build out," he said.

The steady stream of news on cryptocurrency adoption by banks, growth of non-fungible tokens on virtual gaming platforms, launch of bitcoin futures-based U.S. ETFs and a need among investors for diversification in an uncertain interest rate environment have pushed several blockchain tokens, including bitcoin and ether, higher since October.