Ethereum (ETH) has long been overshadowed by the major cryptocurrency Bitcoin (BTC), but that may change. In the midst of a strong 2021, with Bitcoin's price nearly doubling since the beginning of the year, Ethereum has seen even more dramatic gains, especially recently.

Today (May 12), according to CoinGecko, Ethereum's price hit an all-time high of $4,357, a hurdle that has been raised several times in recent weeks. Ethereum's price has risen nearly 30% in the last week alone and has nearly doubled in the past 30 days alone. As a result of the new peak, Ethereum temporarily exceeded $500 billion in market capitalization for the first time today.

Granted, Ethereum still lags behind Bitcoin in many key metrics: the price of ETH is $4,104 as of this writing, while Bitcoin's price is currently $54,767, about 15% below the all-time high it hit about a month ago. Meanwhile, bitcoin's market capitalization is more than twice that of Ethereum, at just over $1 trillion.

In fact, ethereum may not be able to match bitcoin's per-coin price. Bitcoin is in far more limited supply and is considered by many investors to be "digital gold," or a long-term store of value. However, in terms of recent gains, investors are seeing much greater returns from ETH than from BTC.

Bitcoin's current price is about 86% higher than it was on January 1 ($29,352), while Ethereum is more than four times the $730 reported by CoinGecko earlier in the year. Bitcoin just crossed the $500 billion market cap mark in December, and a lot can happen in a little time in such a blazing market.

Bitcoin and Ethereum have grown hand in hand over the years, but recently demand may be driven by Ethereum's wide range of features and optimism about future enhancements.

Ethereum is a smart contract blockchain platform that is increasingly being used for decentralized applications, particularly decentralized finance (DeFi), with nearly $90 billion total currently locked within contracts (via DeFi Pulse). NFTs have also benefited from this year's explosion of interest and funding for non-fusible token (NFT) collector's items, such as rare artwork, video clips, and other verifiable rare digital items tokenized on the blockchain.

Along with the increase in institutional interest and investment, changes lie ahead for Ethereum. The biggest is a gradual shift from the current proof-of-work consensus model, which, like Bitcoin, requires ample computing power, to a more environmentally friendly proof-of-stake model in Ethereum 2.0.

The process is ongoing, but it is unclear when the long-awaited shift will be complete. A small network upgrade, dubbed the "London Hard Fork," is scheduled to take place this summer, which will not only change the fee structure, but could "burn" more ETH, reducing the supply and further increasing the coin's value.

Even with the recent increase in value, further increases are expected in 2021. Crypto analyst Megan Kaspar predicts ETH prices between $8,000 and $10,000 by year-end, which is close to Fundstrat Global Advisors' head of digital asset research David Grider's year-end price prediction of $10,500 close (via Business Insider). Grider sees bitcoin reaching $100,000 by the end of the year.

Disclosure: The author of this article held less than 2 ETH and less than 1 BTC at the time of publication.