The ETH price is expected to surge to new highs by year’s end and subsequently stay high in the long term, according to 50 fintech experts surveyed by Finder.
Finder’s latest Ethereum Price Predictions Report estimates Ethereum’s price will hit US$5,114 by the end of this year based on an average of forecasts from 50 finance and crypto experts.
The world’s second-largest cryptocurrency by market value traded at US$4,416 today, according to CoinGecko data, a new all-time high for Ether.
What Will Ethereum’s Price Be As 2021 Ends?
Experts from Finder, a Sydney-based data and analysis firm, were surveyed in September and October this year. Panelists are allowed to own cryptocurrencies, including Ethereum. According to Finder, the published results were derived from a truncated mean, which removed the top 10% and bottom 10% of responses.
Finder’s panelist for this survey was Daniel Polotsky, the founder and chief advisor of CoinFlip, a Bitcoin ATM network based in the United States. Ethereum’s growth could even exceed Bitcoin’s, Polotsky told Finder. He expects that Ethereum will end the year at US$4,500.
“Ethereum does a better job of supporting development on its blockchain and will have a more lightweight proof-of-stake mining model than Bitcoin [which] means that it can potentially be the backbone of Web 3.0.”
A number of Finder panelists found Ethereum attractive because of its wide range of applications and first-mover advantage.
In decentralized finance, or DeFi, Ethereum currently hosts a large and still rapidly growing alternative financial system, Origin Protocol co-founder Joshua Fraser told Finder. “Eventually Ethereum will be one of the main financial settlement layers of the world. ETH price will reflect this future reality.”
Will Ethereum Keep Its Dominant Position?
However, over US$60 billion of total value is locked within DeFi protocols on the Ethereum network, whereas rival blockchains such as Binance Smart Chain, Cardano, Polkadot, and Solana, have emerged in recent years, according to DeFi Llama.
According to State of the DApps, Ethereum has the advantage of being the first mover, which is why almost 80% of applications are built on its network,” Iwa Salami, associate professor at the University of East London, told Finder.
Thus far, cheaper and faster blockchains (like Solana and Avalanche) have not threatened Ethereum’s dominant position on this front, which means Ethereum’s position is likely to remain the same for some time to come.
On average, the Finder panel predicts Ethereum will lose 30% of its market share to other layer-1 solutions like Solana, Terra, and Avalanche over the next 12 months, with one in 10 panelists believing Solana will eventually surpass Ethereum.
Gavin Smith, general partner at Panxora Crypto, predicts that the key to the winner in this sector will be transaction speeds coupled with transaction costs.”
Smith predicts that Ether’s price will close 2021 at just US$3,000, a drop of over 25% from its current price. Smith is among those who are bearish on Ethereum’s price.
ETH core developers have been extremely slow in fixing the Ethereum blockchain’s transaction cost issues,” Smith told Finder.
It is currently too expensive for most smart contracts to operate without integrating a level-two solution. Other blockchain-based smart contract solutions can support more transactions at a lower cost.
DeFi and NFTs Grow At An Explosive Rate
Scalability has been an issue for Ethereum due to the exponential growth of DeFi and NFTs. Ethereum is in the process of being upgraded to Eth2 over the next few months in order to make it more scalable, secure, and sustainable.
Ethereum founder Vitalk Buterin said during a conference in Shanghai this week that a full Ethereum 2.0 rollout could take years. Meanwhile, the Beacon Chain upgrade, implemented in December, was the first of the Eth2 upgrades, and brought staking to the ecosystem.
‘The Merge’ – that is, the merge between the Ethereum mainnet and Beacon Chain’s proof-of-stake system – is scheduled to take place in 2022, marking the end of Proof-of-Work Ethereum. In 2022, after The Merge, Ethereum’s sharding project will be completed using 64 new chains to improve the network’s scalability and capacity.
It is planned that Altair, the first upgrade to the Beacon Chain, will take place on Oct. 27, 2021, at 10:56:23 a.m. UTC. An epoch is the main unit of time measurement in Eth2. A single epoch lasts approximately 6.4 minutes and consists of 32 slots.
This upgrade adds light-client support to the core consensus, fixes some issues with beacon incentive accounting, and increases penal parameters in accordance with EIP-2982,” according to the Ethereum Foundation.
78 percent of Finder panelists expected that the Eth2 upgrade would solve Ethereum’s scaling issues.
Buterin said layer 2 would be the next step in Ethereum scaling, providing a safe way for Ethereum to scale without sacrificing the decentralization that is so central to the blockchain.
Although the roadmap for Eth2 offers scalability and the early phases of Eth2 are approaching soon, Buterin said, the last major phase of Eth2 will only offer an application-level scalability in years to come.
Ethereum’s scalability could be improved by rolling up transactions outside of the main chain (layer 1) and posting transaction data on layer 1, a Layer 2 solution.
Ethereum’s Future Price Predictions For 2025 and 2030
Overall, Finder’s panelists believe the long-term prospects for Ethereum are strong and price outlook favorable. Among the panelists, 63% said now is the time to buy Ethereum. On average, they predict a rise to $15,364 by 2025 and a triple to $50,788 by 2030.
However, Finder’s panelists predicted that Ethereum will be worth less than its current value at the end of 2021 based on a significant minority of predictions. According to Finder, 28% of experts said now is the time to hodl, 9% said it was time to sell.
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Chris Munch is a professional cryptocurrency and blockchain writer with a background in software businesses, and has been involved in marketing within the cryptocurrency space. With a passion for innovation, Chris brings a unique and insightful perspective to the world of crypto and blockchain. Chris has a deep understanding of the economic, psychological, marketing and financial forces that drive the crypto market, and has made a number of accurate calls of major shifts in market trends. He is constantly researching and studying the latest trends and technologies, ensuring that he is always up-to-date on the latest developments in the industry. Chris’ writing is characterized by his ability to explain complex concepts in a clear and concise manner, making it accessible to a wide audience of readers.
