Ethereum, the second-largest cryptocurrency, has now surpassed payments giant Mastercard by market capitalization ($440 billion and $427 billion, respectively). 

This comes after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission made an apparent U-turn regarding the approval of spot Ethereum exchange-traded fund applications. 

As reported by U.Today, Bloomberg analysts suddenly increased the approval odds to 75% despite previously capping them at just 25%. The reassessment was based on some chatter about the SEC rapidly changing its stance. Just days ago, the consensus was that VanEck's ETF filing was going to be shot down by the SEC due to the lack of engagement. 

According to Eric Balchunas, Bloomberg's senior ETF analyst, the SEC has asked exchanges to swiftly update their 19b-4 filings. The SEC could approve an Ethereum ETF as soon as this Wednesday. 

Alex Thorn, head of research at Galaxy Digital, claims that the SEC would recognize the underlying as a non-security while staked Ether would be considered to be a security. "That would be somewhat congruent with their various court cases, as well as with reports about their various investigations, and perhaps allow SEC to approve Ethereum ETFs while maintaining their previously stated/arguing opinions," he added. 

The price of the largest altcoin surged by as much as 16.2% over the past 24 hours, according to CoinGecko data. The price of Bitcoin has also added 6%, peaking at $71,650 earlier today. 

ETH is still down 25.4% from its all-time high of $4,878 which was achieved two years ago.