Source
Ethereum is closely following Bitcoin in setting a new ATH, as the second-largest cryptocurrency put on a 44% charge over the past month.
The live Ethereum price today is $4,125.93 USD with a 24-hour trading volume of $26,283,094,978 USD. Ethereum went down 0.93% in the last 24 hours. It is the second largest coinmarketcap, and the current live market cap is $486,971,308,142 USD.
Last month there were around 117.5 million ETH coins in circulation, 72 million of which were issued in the genesis block (name given to the first block a cryptocurrency, such as Bitcoin), the first ever block on the ETH blockchain. Out of these 72 million, 60 million were distributed to the initial contributors to the 2014 crowd sale that funded the project, and 12 million were given for development fund.
The remaining amount has been distributed in the form of block rewards (number of bitcoins you get if you successfully mine a block of the currency) to the miners on the ETH network. Miners seemed to be holding more in the expectation of selling at higher prices in the future. The original reward in 2015 was 5 ETH per block, which later went down to 3 ETH in late 2017 and then to 2 ETH in early 2019.
Early this month, crypto industry data suggested ETH miners are storing their spoils, with miner’s holdings of Ether were at their highest level since 2016, just after the digital coin was launched.
For newbies terms used and meaning
Block: Blocks are where data relating to crypto are recorded; they record the most recent transaction that has not yet recorded by any prior blocks
Block rewards: number of bitcoins you get if you successfully mine a block of the currency.
Genesis Block: A Genesis Block is the name given to the first block a cryptocurrency, and blockchain also consists of series of blocks used for storing information of transactions occurring in the network.