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Ethereum, the third largest cryptocurrency by market cap, has crossed the price of $1,000 per one ETH for the first time.

It's currently trading at $1,016 with a $98.3 billion market cap, according to CoinMarketCap.

SEE ALSO:Ripple and Ethereum keep breaking records while Bitcoin takes a back seat

Often referred to as Bitcoin's little brother, Ethereum is actually a vastly different project than Bitcoin. While Bitcoin is primarily a payment platform and a currency, Ethereum is a platform for decentralized apps. This is what makes it extremely important in the world of cryptocurrencies -- in 2017, there have been hundreds of projects that raised funds using the Ethereum platform, and many more are lined up.

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Credit: Coinmarketcap.com

As always, it's nearly impossible to pinpoint the exact reasons behind this latest price increase. On Dec. 31, Ethereum's development team launched the test network for Casper, a significant upgrade for Ethereum which is currently in alpha stage. Additionally, the entire cryptocurrency market has been extremely bullish in the past couple of weeks; the current market cap of all cryptocurrencies put together is at a record $767 billion.Ethereum recently lost its long-held place as the second-largest cryptocurrency to Ripple, which has had an absolutely incredible rally that started on Dec 12: From about $0.25 to the current price of $3.70 per XRP, and a market cap of $144.6 billion.

The largest cryptocurrency out there is still Bitcoin, with a price of $15,027 and a market cap of $252.2 billion at time of writing. Its price dropped 1.17 percent in the last 24 hours.

Disclosure: The author of this text owns, or has recently owned, a number of cryptocurrencies, including BTC and ETH. 

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