Ethereum Price Surge Boosts Nvidia

As the value of the ether digital currency continues to grow, it has been suggested that the rising price could have a knock-on effect by increasing the value of the technology firm Nvidia by $150 million.

RBC Capital analyst Mitch Steves has said that the price increases seen on the ethereum platform’s currency have encouraged more people to look for powerful computers with Nvidia GPUs in order to mine new coins.

The company’s shares have been climbing in recent days and Steves allocated a rating of “outperform” to them, with an 18% rise expected for Nvidia shares. He pointed out that the incredible performance of ether and other cryptocurrencies means that the payback time for recouping the investment paid for mining equipment has now dropped from 9.4 months to 5.6 months.

He suggested that this could lead to more GPU sales and more mining activity in the future. Steves continued by saying that higher levels of institutional investment are at least partly behind the latest price hikes that have seen the combined market capitalisation of cryptocurrencies reach $300 billion.

He also said that cryptocurrencies are here to stay and that they “wouldn’t be surprised” to see more institutional investors and high net worth individuals get involved in these currencies.

Of course, ether has gained a massive 2,000% this year. Nevertheless, analysts are aware that the proposed move towards proof-of-stake on the Ethereum platform will see the demand for high powered GPUs drop, as they will no longer be so necessary to get the mining done.

Yet, this move to change how payments are verified is now expected to not go through until the end of 2018. For their part, Nvidia is said to be working on more powerful processors that would make mining easier and slicker in the future.

New Wallet App Support

Meanwhile, ethereum received another boost when the bitcoin wallet app Abra was announced to be adding support for it. The start-up firm behind this app said that it would now include the second-biggest digital currency at an investment event in New York.

Abra founder Bill Barhydt said that the option of using the app with ethereum would be available within a week. At the same time, the storage capacity of the wallet app will also be increased, meaning that it will be possible to store different cryptocurrencies at the same time.

Barhydt confirmed that users will be able to store access to Ethereum and “store three different wallets at the same time”. This means that a user could store the likes of Ethereum, bitcoin and US dollars simultaneously. They will also be allowing multi-signature use too.

In other digital currency news, bitcoin has breached the $10,000 ($7,458) mark for the first time. This currency has enjoyed an increase in its value by over 10 times in 2017 and some experts believe that it could have an equally spectacular 2018.

It is believed that the latest price rally may be largely based on people who fear that they may be missing out on something special if they don’t invest while they still can.