Ether (ETH) accelerated 8% in spot crypto markets on Monday amid an uptick in social sentiment and optimism among derivatives traders.

Ether prices have gained around 8% over the past 24 hours, with the asset hitting an intraday high of $3,722 on April 9, outpacing Bitcoin (BTC) and most of its closest peers, according to CoinGecko.

It is the highest price ETH has reached since March 16, just over three weeks ago. The asset is now 9% away from its 2024 high of $4,070 and 24% down from its 2021 all-time high of $4,878.

Comparatively, Bitcoin prices have moved 3% over the past day reaching $71,395 at the time of writing.

Ethereum’s momentum may have been spurred by several factors, including “ultra-strong” social and market activity, according to social intelligence firm Lunar Crush.

“Social activity continues to accelerate, joined by both strong price action and market volume,” it noted in a post on X on April 8.

Meanwhile, Ethereum derivatives markets are also hinting at bullish sentiment for the asset for the rest of this month.

There is currently around $600 million in open interest (OI) at the $4,000 strike price and $378 million at strike prices of $3,700 and $5,000, according to crypto futures exchange Deribit. 

This shows an upside bias and bullish sentiment for the end-of-the-month options expiry on April 26, when around 900,000 Ethereum contracts expire with a notional value of $3.8 billion.

Not everyone is so bullish, however. Crypto author and educator Vijay Boyapati opined in a post on X on April 8 that the premise of Ethereum spot ETF approvals is driving momentum, but it could be short-lived if they get rejected.

“All the hot money that flowed into ETH because of ETF hopium is going to go back into Bitcoin once the Ethereum ETFs are all rejected…”

Related: Key Ethereum price metric targets $5.4K ETH in 2024

On April 9, on-chain analytics firm Santiment observed that “powered by Ethereum’s rise to start the week,” ERC-20 assets have been “well ahead of the markets on average,” the sector has grown by 8.1% in the past week.

Meanwhile, Toncoin (TON) has flipped Cardano (ADA) to take the tenth spot by market capitalization following an 18.5% daily gain to hit an all-time high of $6.50 on April 9.

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