> Indeed, I would be amazed if at least part of the recent price movement of bitcoin wasn't due to people moving fiat -> BTC -> ETH

Can't be the case because of simple laws of supply and demand.

You would see BTC being hammered; meanwhile all 3 main currency out there right now - BTC ETC LTC are on a huge over 100% rise in last 45 days or so.

ETH is not singled out but its the youngest so IMHO get the most potential to shoot into $2,5K of BTC level (obviously don't take my advice, blah blah not a lawyer on analytical specialist)

I think as this currency is getting more squared away in terms of laws and regulations all around the world, many big fish are jumping aboard, including some hedge funds and other investment powerhouses. Remember they make money even if coins go down to $0.000001. I can imagine even if they see huge risk of a swing +50%/-80% on crypto, if they got clients keep calling them all the time about "that cool online currency that i can make killing off of", then they just follow market and offer wallets/investment in crypt, of course not taking any risk themselves :)

Bottom line... with all 3 major currencies not seeing the hill yet, most likely buckle up for a huge ride up, as most of the world still needs to "catch up" and get some of virtual currency in their own portfolios as well.

*not an investment advice.

Anecdata: more than five people in my network bought bitcoin only so they could then buy ether.

Weird. Coinbase allows you to use your debit card, credit card, direct wire of USD from your account (at least in USA). No idea why would they do that -- am I missing something?

Maybe it's because we're outside the USA, but it's much easier to buy bitcoin directly using other services than Coinbase, and we haven't found one yet that does ethereum.

Maybe they would rather use another exchange like Kraken or poloniex in order to also trade pairs like BTC/XRP or BTC/VTC.

That's a huge reason. Look into the declining total % of bitcoin and increasing % of all the other altcoins.

Market cap is kind of a BS indicator though. If I release a new altcoin and "pre-mine" a billion coins, and start selling small amounts of these for a penny, the market cap of my new coin is around $10m.

And look at how much of that is occurring on Poloniex. And then try and find out who runs or owns Poloniex, or how they are licensed, or how they store customer funds.