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Ethereum, the third largest cryptocurrency by market cap, has crossed the price of $1,000 per one ETH for the first time.

It's currently trading at $1,016 with a $98.3 billion market cap, according to CoinMarketCap.

Often referred to as Bitcoin's little brother, Ethereum is actually a vastly different project than Bitcoin. While Bitcoin is primarily a payment platform and a currency, Ethereum is a platform for decentralized apps. This is what makes it extremely important in the world of cryptocurrencies -- in 2017, there have been hundreds of projects that raised funds using the Ethereum platform, and many more are lined up.

As always, it's nearly impossible to pinpoint the exact reasons behind this latest price increase. On Dec. 31, Ethereum's development team launched the test network for Casper, a significant upgrade for Ethereum which is currently in alpha stage. Additionally, the entire cryptocurrency market has been extremely bullish in the past couple of weeks; the current market cap of all cryptocurrencies put together is at a record $767 billion.Ethereum recently lost its long-held place as the second-largest cryptocurrency to Ripple, which has had an absolutely incredible rally that started on Dec 12: From about $0.25 to the current price of $3.70 per XRP, and a market cap of $144.6 billion.

The largest cryptocurrency out there is still Bitcoin, with a price of $15,027 and a market cap of $252.2 billion at time of writing. Its price dropped 1.17 percent in the last 24 hours.

Disclosure: The author of this text owns, or has recently owned, a number of cryptocurrencies, including BTC and ETH. 

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