Ether returned to $500 on Friday for the first time in over two years.

The move came about as altcoins gradually rallied from poor performance.

According to data from Cointelegraph Markets, Coin360 and TradingView, ETH/USD briefly reached the psychologically important barrier in trading on Friday before a rejection impeded progress, reports Cointelegraph.

Ether’s performance was welcome news for traders - despite being capped at around 6% daily gains at the time of writing - who said that overall this year, the largest altcoin has even outperformed Bitcoin.
Year-to-date returns are 284% for Ether and 155% for Bitcoin.
Compared to the drop in price back in March following the Covid-fuelled cross-asset crash, Bitcoin remained the strongest digital asset.
Back then, ETH/USD traded at $117 – making Friday’s figure a 327% increase – whilst BTC/USD gained 411% from $3,600 to $18,420.
Coupled with Ether hitting the $500 mark, other key altcoins such as Litecoin registered 12% gains to outperform Bitcoin on the day, the only major altcoin to do so in the last month, by 7%.
Previously, Cointelegraph Markets analyst Michaël van de Poppe said a new “altseason” would take a while, but Ether’s next bull run could see highs of $20,000.
During an interview with Van de Poppe for Cointelegraph, CEO of Nugget’s News Alex Saunders predicted ETH/USD would surpass its current all-time highs of $1,400 by the end of next year.
Moreover, Bitcoin continued to spark attention on Friday, reclaiming $18,000 and hitting resistance at its past high of $18,420 earlier this week.