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Cryptocurrencies are breaking more records this month. First, Bitcoin reached $66,000 while Ether reached an all-time high of $4,4461.96 on Friday. Consequently, Ether's market capitalization surged above $520 billion.

This means that if you bought $1,000 worth of Ether on October 29, 2020, at a price of $382.82, then your coins would be $11,645 by now. This represents a 1,000% increase in a year. That’s three times better than Bitcoin since a $1,000 purchase a year ago would be worth around $4,476 as of this writing. In parallel, the S&P 500 only surged 38.8%.

The Ether rally followed the Ethereum network upgrade on Wednesday. The network is a shift to Ethereum 2.0 (Eth2) which is set to transform the network’s infrastructure. The upgrade will also turn Ethereum mining obsolete.

As of this writing, Ethereum relies on an outrageous energy-intensive proof of work (PoW) model. The proof of work is when cryptocurrency miners try to solve complex puzzles to validate transactions. However, the new Ethereum 2.0 is set to scale the network to a proof of stake (PoS) model where users validate transactions according to their coins holding. The goal of Eth2 is to turn Ethereum into a more secure and sustainable network.

Nonetheless, before investing in cryptocurrencies you should consider their past. The digital currencies market is highly volatile and crypto tokens can lose their value at a glance. For instance, Bitcoin slumped from $64,000 to $30,000 in one month before surging back to $61,000 as of this writing. In other words, don’t invest a sum that you’re not comfortable losing.