Ethereum saw three bullish fundamental news events last week

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Despite the over 100 percent rally from the $88 lows of March’s capitulation, Ethereum remains over 85 percent below the all-time high it set at the exact peak of the last cryptocurrency mania.

Ethereum may soon get some bullish relief, though, with news being released of three fundamental trends that could dramatically boost demand for ETH, thus driving prices higher.

Ryan Sean Adams, the founder of Mythos Capital, identified these trends, which all took place in the span of a week, in the tweet below.

ETH gets futures

Reddit building on Ethereum

Visa putting dollars on Ethereum

That all happened this week

??

— Ryan Sean Adams – rsa.eth ?? (@RyanSAdams) May 16, 2020

Ethereum see three massive news events in a boost to its bull case

• ?ETH gets first U.S.-regulated futures market: ETH got its first U.S. CFTC-regulated futures market last week when ErisX — an exchange backed by prominent players like TD Ameritrade — launched its contracts last week. A leading crypto analyst expects the launch of ETH futures to send prices higher.
• Reddit unveils Ethereum-based token project: As reported by CryptoSlate, leading online forum Reddit — one of the most-visited sites on the internet — confirmed last week a new feature called “Community Points.” These are points based on an Ethereum testnet that allows the site’s millions of users to gain access to special features. Eventually, the tokens will be migrated to the main Ethereum network,
• Visa may be building a digital dollar system on Ethereum: Visa filed a patent on May 14 that outlines a process that would turn fiat currency — be that the dollar, yen, yuan, and so on — into a blockchain asset. While the system seemed somewhat theoretical, the patent mentioned the use of the Ethereum network. The multinational payments company putting a payment rail onto Ethereum would dramatically increase demand for ETH and would onboard millions into the crypto space.

Visa's patent to digitize dollars shows that they plan to use Ethereum pic.twitter.com/XANC4q0Twn

— eric.eth (@econoar) May 15, 2020

Crucial to ETH’s network effects

While these developments may not have an instant tangible impact on demand for ETH, they’re crucial to the asset’s network effect — an economic concept that the value of a network (like Facebook or like the U.S. dollar) is tied to how many people use it.

Mike Novogratz — founder of Galaxy Digital and a former partner at Goldman Sachs — said the following to Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin and Forkast.news’ Angie Lau about the blockchain’s network effect:

One of the things for the Ethereum narrative is valuing the network kind of like we do with Facebook — the more network effects you get, [the better]. Like getting Tether to migrate its coins to Ethereum brings people using that to the network.

What Novogratz is saying is that attracting new individuals through new use cases for Ethereum and the ETH token itself — not just using the cryptocurrency as a speculative investment or as a store of value — is how this network has and will continue to gain value over time.

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