According to a tweet by Leon Waidmann, Ethereum, the second-largest digital currency, has exceeded the market capitalization of payments giant Mastercard, with values of $440 billion and $427 billion respectively.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has seemingly changed its stance on approving applications for spot Ethereum exchange-traded funds.

Eric Balchunas, analysts at Bloomberg have raised the chances of approval for an Ethereum ETF to 75%, a significant increase from the previous estimation of only 25%. This reconsideration was prompted by discussions about the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) potentially shifting its position on the matter. Until recently, it was widely believed that the SEC would reject VanEck's ETF application due to a lack of involvement.

Further, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has requested exchanges to promptly update their 19b-4 submissions. It is possible that the SEC may give approval to an Ethereum ETF as early as this Wednesday.

According to Alex Thorn, the head of research at Galaxy Digital, the SEC would categorize the underlying as a non-security, while Ether that is staked would be classified as a security. Thorn also believes that this decision would align with the SEC's stance in other court cases and investigations, potentially opening the door for the approval of Ethereum ETFs while still upholding their previous viewpoints.

However, value of Ethereum rose by 22.72% in the last 24 hours. Bitcoin's price also showed an increase of 7.5%, reaching a high of $71,900 based on Coingecko’s data.