Disclaimer: The datasets shared in the following article have been compiled from a set of online resources and do not reflect AMBCrypto’s own research on the subject.
In the four days following the launch of Ethereum’s Shanghai upgrade, crypto-exchanges noted net inflows of 179,500 ether (ETH), worth around $375 million.
In fact, according to CryptoQuant statistics, traders deposited 1,101,079 ETH to exchanges between 13 April and 16 April, but only removed 921,579 tokens. This was the month’s greatest four-day net inflow.
Transferring tokens to exchanges typically implies that investors are prepared to sell, which may result in a decline in its price.
For the first time since August, Ethereum, the market’s second-largest cryptocurrency, has hiked past the $2000-mark on the charts. Even though the optimism seemed to be dissipating, ETH was still valued at above $2k at press time.
This is interesting, especially since after bottoming out in June 2022 at about $880, the price of ETH has more than doubled. This, despite several unfavourable developments such as the demise of FTX, a rise in interest rates, and stricter U.S. regulations.
Here, it is important to note that the Consumer Price Index (CPI) calculates inflation or the rate of growth in product and service prices. As a result, traders and investors predict that the US Federal Reserve will opt to postpone or slow down its intentions to hike interest rates at its next meeting if the CPI report indicates a high level of inflation.
Ethereum (ETH), the token that powers the world’s leading smart contracts platform, was valued at over $2085, at the time of writing. Needless to say, cynicism around Shanghai seemed to be unwarranted.
Read Price Prediction for Ethereum (ETH) 2023-24
As a result, ETH/USD has drawn an ascending triangle, which is supported and opposed by a rising trendline and horizontal level, respectively. As lows rise steadily and highs hover around the same level, the pattern points to aggressive purchasing at these price levels.
Speculations around Shanghai weren’t without reason, however. Especially since ETH was once valued at over $3,700, just over a year ago.
Even so, the short-term sell-off event that was expected to follow the update, one which will allow stakers to withdraw their vested tokens from Ethereum’s proof-of-stake (PoS) smart contract, has not come to pass. At least, not yet.
The Ethereum community seems to be supportive of Coinbase’s recently revealed layer-2 network, Base, which has been called a “watershed moment” and a “huge confidence vote” for the blockchain network.
Base, a layer-2 network driven by Optimism and secured on Ethereum, seeks to eventually develop into a network for creating decentralized applications (dApps) on the blockchain. According to Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase, the layer-2 network is now in its testnet phase.
The move is “a massive vote of confidence for Ethereum,” according to Ryan Sean Adams, host of the Bankless Show. This could set a precedent for cryptocurrency businesses and financial institutions to use Ethereum as their preferred settlement layer.
Recently, Vitalik Buterin, the creator of Ethereum, donated $150,000 in ETH to Syrian and Turkish victims. Additionally, the native coin of the Ethereum blockchain, ETH, experienced a significant price drop after whales sold 350,000 ETH tokens.
According to Diogo Mónica, co-founder and president of Anchorage Digital, a cryptocurrency bank with a market cap of over $3 billion, the Merge’s success transformed Ethereum from “a smart contract platform lagging behind” into “something that was doing things properly.” This is accurate: After the Merge, institutional interest in ETH staking rose, according to Matt Hougan, CIO at Bitwise Asset Management.
As ETH dominance has increased compared to other cryptocurrencies over the past few years, Ether’s bullish setup vs Bitcoin is apparent. Both Bitcoin and Ethereum have consolidated over the week as the broader crypto market continues to enjoy a bullish spell.
The price of Ethereum has lately undergone a significant correction, yet the whales have been purchasing at every decline. The fifth-largest accumulation day in a year was recorded last week as ETH whale activity reached a new level. As the FTX problem developed over this month of November, Ethereum whales have been building up. According to a Santiment report,
“Ethereum’s large key addresses have been growing in number since the #FTX debacle in early November. Pictured are the key moments where shark & whale addresses have accumulated & dumped. The number of 100 to 100k $ETH addresses is at a 20-month high.”
It almost reached the lows during the FTX collapse-driven meltdown of the cryptocurrency market, but it rapidly bounced back and was able to maintain above those levels as well. This strengthens the argument since Ethereum has typically outperformed Bitcoin.
Given everything, buying Ethereum must be a sound investment in the long term, right? Most experts have positive predictions for ETH. Furthermore, the bulk of long-term Ethereum price projections are upbeat.
Why are projections important?
Since Ethereum has seen phenomenal growth in recent years, it is not surprising that investors are placing significant bets on this cryptocurrency. Ethereum gained traction after the price of Bitcoin dropped in 2020, following a protracted period of stagnation in 2018 and 2019.
Interestingly, much of the altcoin market remained idle even after the halving. One of the few that picked up the momentum quickly is Ethereum. Ethereum had increased by 200% from its 2017 highs by the end of 2021.
Ethereum may experience such a spike thanks to several crucial factors. One of these is an upgrade to the Ethereum network, specifically a move to Ethereum 2.0. Another reason is the Ethereum tokenomics debate. With the switch to Ethereum 2.0, ether tokenomics will become even more deflationary. As a result, there won’t be as many tokens on the market to meet increasing demand. The outcome might increase Ethereum’s rising momentum in the future.
In this article, we’ll take a quick look at the cryptocurrency market’s recent performance, paying particular attention to market cap and volume. The most well-known analysts’ and platforms’ predictions will be summarized at the end, along with a look at the Fear & Greed Index to gauge market sentiment.
Ethereum’s price, volume, and everything in between
At press time, ETH was trading at $2085 with a market capitalization of $241.6 billion. Over the last 7 days, ETH had appreciated by 10% on the charts.
Source: BTC/USD, TradingView
Even though it’s difficult to forecast the price of a volatile cryptocurrency, most experts concur that ETH may once again cross the $4,000 barrier in 2023. And, according to a recent forecast by Bloomberg intelligence analyst Mike McGlone, the price of Ethereum will conclude the year between $4,000 and $4,500.
Additionally, according to a report by Kaiko last year, ETH’s market share of trading volume will reach 50% parity with Bitcoin’s for the first time in 2023.
According to Kaiko, ETH outpaced Bitcoin in July last year as a result of significant inflows into the spot and derivative markets. Most exchanges have seen this surge, which can be an indication of returning investors. Additionally, a rise in average trade size is the exact reverse of what has been seen so far in 2022’s downturn.
In fact, a majority of cryptocurrency influencers are bullish on Ethereum and anticipate it to reach incredible highs.
While the broader Ethereum community was looking forward to the environment-friendly PoS update, a faction emerged in favor of a fork that will retain the energy-intensive PoW model.
The faction was mostly made up of miners who risk losing their investment in expensive mining equipment since the update would render their business model useless. Prominent Chinese miner Chandler Guo stated on Twitter that an ETHPoW is “coming soon”.
At the time, Binance clarified that in the event of a fork which creates a new token, the ETH ticker will be reserved for the Ethereum PoS chain, adding that “withdrawals for the forked token will be supported”. Stablecoin projects Tether and Circle both reiterated their exclusive support for the Ethereum PoS chain after the Merge.
TradingView expressed the same opinion at the time this article was written, and their technical analysis of the Ethereum price indicated that it was a “Buy” signal for ETH.
In fact, PwC’s Crypto-head Henri Arslanian claimed in an edition of First Mover that “Ethereum is the only show in town.” However, investors will need to witness increased demand and functioning for Ether’s price to keep climbing.
According to investor and creator of the cryptocurrency research and media organization Token Metrics Ian Balina, “I think Ethereum can go to $8,000.”
ETH Whale Activity
On 27 March, blockchain analytics firm Santiment revealed that almost 90% of Ethereum’s supply was stored in self-custody addresses. The last time the figure was so high was nearly eight years ago in 2015, shortly after the protocol’s native token saw the light of day. This was happening as users are withdrawing their assets from Binance that is facing CFTC’s investigation.
This essential all-time low ratio of ETH on exchanges (10.31%) indicated confidence from hodlers.
😮📊 #Ethereum is now being held in self custody and away from exchanges at the highest level since the week the token was introduced nearly 8 years ago. This essential all-time low ratio of $ETH on exchanges (10.31%) indicates confidence from #hodlers. https://t.co/VPwlCjzbAN pic.twitter.com/VB2r57xhQl
— Santiment (@santimentfeed) March 27, 2023
Data from blockchain analytics firm Santiment shows ETH supply held by the top addresses on crypto exchanges has been on the rise since early June. On the other hand, ETH supply held by the top non-exchange addresses i.e. ETH held in hardware wallets, digital wallets etc. has been declining since early June. But why June? Because it was around that time that a tentative timeline for the Merge was disclosed to the community.
Also, Santiment had tweeted that over the past 3 months, whales had beefed up their exchange holdings by 78%.
So what does this mean? It means that Ethereum whales are moving their ETH onto exchanges. Top ETH hodlers are taking their supply out of cold storage and moving it to exchanges, most likely to facilitate a quick transaction if needed.
In the run up to the merge, a number of exchanges like Coinbase and Binance announced that they will be suspending all ETH and ERC-20 token deposits and withdrawals, in order to ensure a seamless transition.
It is possible that the whales moved their holdings onto exchanges to either preemptively dump their holdings in anticipation of a price slump after the Merge. The other possibility is them waiting till well after the Merge to act on ETH’s price action.
Let’s now look at what well-known platforms and analysts have to say about where they believe Ethereum will be in 2025 and 2030.
Ethereum Price Prediction 2025
According to Changelly, the least expected price of ETH in 2025 is $4,204.12, while the maximum possible price is $5,063.95. The average expected trading cost is $4,355.45.
DigitalCoinPrice is even more bullish in its assessment of ETH’s future performance. It predicts that ETH will trade as low as $5,380.03 and as high as $6,601.51, with its average price being $5,918.92.
However, you have to remember that the year is 2025, and a lot of these projections are based on Ethereum 2.0 launching and performing successfully. And by that, it means Ethereum has to solve its high-cost gas fees issues as well. Also, global regulatory and legislative frameworks have not yet consistently backed cryptocurrencies.
However, even though newer and more environmentally friendly technologies have been developed, analysts frequently claim that Ethereum’s “first mover advantage” has positioned it for long-term success, despite new competition. The price predictions seem conceivable because, in addition to its projected update, Ethereum is anticipated to be used more frequently than ever before in the development of DApps.
How many ETHs can you buy for $1?
Ethereum Price Prediction 2030
Changelly also argued that the price of ETH in 2030 has been estimated by cryptocurrency specialists after years of price monitoring. It will be traded for a minimum of $24,867.82 and a maximum of $30,483.23. So, on average, you can anticipate that in 2030, the price of ETH will be roughly $25,593.23.
DigitalCoinPrice is, however, not as bullish in its 2030 prediction for ETH. It predicts that the minimum and maximum prices of ETH in 2030 will be $17,805.72 and $19,116.90. On average, it will be traded at $18,729.30.
Long-term Ethereum price estimates can be a useful tool for analyzing the market and learning how key platforms anticipate that future developments like the Ethereum 2.0 upgrade will affect pricing.
Crypto-Rating, for instance, predicts that by 2030, Ethereum’s value will likely exceed $100,000.
Both Pantera Capital CEO Dan Morehead and deVEre Group founder Nigel Green also predict that during the next ten years, the price of ETH will hit $100,000.
Sounds like too much? Well, the functional capabilities of the network, such as interoperability, security, and transaction speed, will radically change as a result of Ethereum 2.0. Should these and other related reforms be successfully implemented, opinion on ETH will change from being slightly favorable to strongly bullish. This will provide Ethereum the chance to entirely rewrite the rules of the cryptocurrency game.
Conclusion
A potential concern is the prospect of a price impact when Ether’s short-term and long-term trends appear to be biassed in favor of the bulls from an on-chain viewpoint.
According to the most current data from Santiment, the majority of Ethereum whale cohorts have increased their ETH accumulation in recent weeks. For instance, in March, the amount of Ether owned by addresses with a balance of 1,000 to 10,000 ETH
Another potential worry on investors’ concerns is the prospect of a price impact when validators are finally free to return their 32 ETH deposits following the conclusion of the Shapella hard fork. How many of the 16 million ETH that is currently staked on the Beacon Chain will be sold on the open market is unknown.
A compelling argument in favor of transitioning to liquid staking platforms is the capability to use liquid staking derivatives on other decentralized finance networks without sacrificing staking reward.
While some of these investors have invested in rival tokens in order to profit, others are doing it out of precaution in order to hedge their portfolios. This has been corroborated by the volatility witnessed in metrics like daily active users and price action of so-called Ethereum killers like Avalanche, Solana, Cardano etc. in the run up to the merge event which is less than a month away.
The majority of investors anticipated that Ethereum would bottom out at $3500 early this year, but the currency moved lower to show them incorrect. In fact, ETH briefly fell below the terrifying $1000 threshold.
However, the coin has always rebounded when it appeared that it was poised to strike the target once more, restoring confidence in its future. This includes the incident in November 2022 when an FTX hacker allegedly dumped over 30,000 ETH. Hope is offered by the token’s persistence in the wake of the FTX bankruptcy and the protracted crypto cold.
There is broad hope that the first smart contract blockchain will survive this period of trials, despite Ethereum’s rivalries and other factors contributing to its continuous instability.
As far as the Merge is concerned, it is being hailed as a major success story by the Ethereum community. Buterin cited a research study by an Ethereum researcher, Justin Drake, that suggests that the “merge will reduce worldwide electricity consumption by 0.2%.”
“The merge will reduce worldwide electricity consumption by 0.2%” – @drakefjustin
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) September 15, 2022
It also reduces the time to mine one block of ETH from 13 seconds to 12 seconds. The Merge marks 55% completion of Ethereum’s journey toward greater scalability and sustainability.
The likelihood that Ether will experience a price surge of 50% in the future is increased by its superior interim fundamentals to those of Bitcoin. To begin with, Ether’s annual supply rate plummeted in October 2022, in part because of a fee-burning mechanism known as EIP-1559 that takes a certain amount of ETH out of perpetual circulation anytime an on-chain transaction takes place.
Concerns about censorship on the Ethereum ecosystem have also emerged post the Merge. Around half of the Ethereum blocks are Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC)-compliant as MEV-Boost got implemented. As Ethereum has upgraded to a PoS consensus, MEV-Boost has been enabled to a more representative distribution of block proposers, rather than a small group of miners under PoW. This development raises a concern about censorship under the force of OFAC.
It is interesting to note that while many eagerly waited for Ethereum’s Merge and beefed up their holdings in anticipation of a price surge, there was a group of investors who weren’t confident in the Merge’s successful rollout. These investors were betting on a glitch in the rollout process, hoping that the update runs into trouble. While some of these investors have started investing in rival tokens in order to profit, others are doing it out of precaution in order to hedge their portfolios. This was corroborated by the volatility witnessed in metrics like daily active users and price action of so-called Ethereum killers like Avalanche, Solana, Cardano etc. in the run up to the Merge.
The majority of Ethereum price forecasts indicate that ETH can anticipate tremendous growth over the ensuing years.
As per Santiment, Ethereum’s active addresses have sunk to 4-month lows with weak hands continuing to drop post-Merge and disinterest at a high as prices have stagnated.
What about the flippening then? Is it possible that the altcoin might pass Bitcoin on the charts in the future? Well, that is possible. In fact, according to BlockchainCenter, ETH has already surpassed BTC on a few key metrics.
Consider Transaction Counts and Total Transaction Fees, for instance. On both counts, ETH is ahead of BTC.
Source: Blockchain Center
On the contrary, the traditional definition of a ‘flippening’ relates to the market cap of cryptos flipping.
However, remember that a lot can change over these years, especially in a highly volatile market like cryptocurrency. Leading analysts’ projections may vary, but even the most conservative one’s might cause respectable profits for anyone choosing to invest in Ethereum. As far as the F&G Index is concerned, ETH shows ‘neutral’ market sentiment for the moment.
Source: CFGI.io
