Ether extended its rally on Tuesday, surging 9% to reach $4,708 by Wednesday morning. The world’s second-largest cryptocurrency is now trading just 4% shy of its all-time high of $4,891 set in November 2021.

“Including staking rewards, ETH has now outperformed BTC by 900 [basis points] YTD,” said VanEck’s head of digital assets research, Matthew Sigel, on X.

The price action comes as BitMine Immersion Technology announced plans to raise an additional $20 billion in equity to buy more ETH. The firm already holds 1.15 million ETH valued just shy of $5 billion, but its bigger target is to own 5% of ETH’s total supply.

This story is an excerpt from the Unchained Daily newsletter.

BitMine chair and prominent market strategist Tom Lee projects that ETH could reach between $7,000 and $15,000 before year-end.

“It’s all about ETH right now,” said Asgard founder Alex Kruger on the Bits + Bips podcast, “it’s about flows, it’s about BitMine and Tom Lee.”

Meanwhile, solana was also on a tear, surging 15% and reaching an intraday high of $201.58.