Ethereum prices have been breaking out in recent times. This price breakout has been followed by an increase in the cryptocurrency token’s dominance in market share. Of course, it has also followed a decline in Bitcoin prices.
So, it got us thinking about the “house that Vitalik Buterin built”. We wondered if this was the “moment of glory” and if this trend will continue.
Several experts talked to us and made their minds known to us about this. Here is what they had to say.
Scott Melker, Notable Crypto Trader & Investor
Ethereum has continued to perform well as Bitcoin has corrected – it was lagging for months, and insiders were anticipating that Ether would eventually catch up. If history is a guide, Bitcoin will eventually rise again and its percentage of market cap will rise concurrently. Altcoins will once again take a back seat if that happens.
I am extremely bullish on Ethereum, but nothing goes up in a straight line – we will see market dominance rise and fall on the way up.
Scott Melker is The Wolf of All Streets. He is a crypto trader and investor, the host of the popular “The Wolf Of All Streets Podcast,” the author of “The Wolf Den” newsletter, and a prolific writer and thought leader in the crypto space. He is also an early investor in a number of blockchain-based projects. He has been featured in the New York Times, Forbes, Businessweek, The Wall Street Journal, Coindesk, CoinTelegraph, CCN and more.
Scott was recently named “Influencer Of The Year” by Binance and as one of the “Top 100 Notable People in Blockchain in 2021” by CoinTelegraph. Most recently, he was a featured expert on FOX Business show, “Making Money with Charles Payne,” to discuss the current state of cryptocurrency.
Irene Skrynova, Unlimint’s Head of Customer Success
In comparison to 2017, the crypto industry today has finally gained the much-needed ground for its popularity growth: overall institutional interest, real application of technology, and, as a result, growing interest from retail investors looking to step into the market.More and more applications are being built on the Ethereum protocol which in its turn promotes the usage of Ethereum as a currency, leaving no backdoors for its users. We can clearly see this in the recent boom of NFTs, which have taken the cultural space by storm, and DeFi, which have revolutionized the traditional financial infrastructure and its intermediaries.Retail investors are likely to place a bet on Ethereum based not only on numbers but also on psychological factors: when you have to choose between owning a whole Ethereum (the second-largest currency by capitalization and trading volume, that went up roughly by 400%, compared to about 100% for Bitcoin in 2021), and owning just a fraction of a Bitcoin, the pros and cons shape an answer themselves, especially if you consider Bitcoin’s path to stardom as an example.In the short term, Ethereum is likely to outperform Bitcoin in its growth dynamics with a more significant uptrend but there is also more volatility involved. At the beginning of June, we are likely going to see a positive dynamic for ETH again with a correction following closer to the end of the month.In the long term, I believe Ethereum has all the potential to increase its market capitalization by 50-100% by the end of the year catching up with Bitcoin, and even lead the ride in the long-term, at least in the trading volume.
Michael Flight, CEO Liberty Real Estate Fund the World’s 1st Net Lease Security Token Fund
Ethereum is not an optimal solution. The current gas fees make it cost prohibitive to issue a security to the blockchain or in our case make regular monthly payments to our investors. The time for block completion and transaction certainty are also problems with Ethereum. Plus the Proof Of Work consensus method is wasteful and energy inefficient.ETH has been saying for a while a while they will solve these problems but we have responsibility to our investors to reduce costs, optimize trading speed with a secure public blockchain.There are other better Proof of Stake blockchains for financial assets and trading like the Algorand (ALGO) algorand.which is faster, less expensive per transaction and much, much more energy efficient. I think you will see wider adoption of better built blockchains once more institutional investors start issuing securities and tokenizing real estate “on chain”.
Remko Poierrie, CFO at Rubix
People are realizing the limitations Bitcoin has in terms of blockchain capabilities and environmental impact. Being the largest next to Bitcoin, its normal market mechanics they absorb most of the shift.The growth limitation of ETH however are the gas fees and moving to POS where people will realize is also dominated by miners and not truly decentralized. Long term winners will be those running on cost efficient and green blockchain technology like the RubiX protocol.
Kent Barton, Head of Research and Development at ShapeShift
Bitcoin has succeeded wildly in its efforts to become a “digital gold” alternative to weakening fiat currencies. However, it’s also very limited in scope; you can transact and hold the currency, but that’s about it. Ethereum is quickly catching up to Bitcoin for the simple reason that it can do so much more, while also remaining as resilient as Bitcoin.
All manner of applications can be built on Ethereum. One example is decentralized finance (DeFi), which lets users lend and borrow crypto assets without needing approval from a third party.
DeFi has seen rapid adoption; over the past year the amount of funds in these applications has grown from $1 billion to more than $70 billion. Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) are another example; these allow artists, musicians, and others to create scarce digital assets they can sell directly to their fans.
Ethereum’s resilience has to do with its decentralization; no single individual or group of attackers can feasibly shut down the network. Additionally, the protocol is changing its monetary policy to be more in-line with Bitcoin this summer.
This should make Ether (ETH), its native cryptocurrency, more attractive to investors who are looking for currencies with a sound and predictable monetary policy. The network is planning to switch to proof of stake—a way of validating transactions that uses far less energy that the current proof of work used by both Bitcoin and Ethereum.
This will be an important change for investors and users who appreciate Ethereum’s versatility, but are concerned that the mining supporting the blockchain could be harmful to the environment.
Clayton Moore, Founder and CEO of NetCents (OTC:NTTCF)
“I think there are a number of factors contributing to Ethereum’s rise in market dominance.
Ethereum is currently undergoing multiple upgrades, which will unlock the currency’s full potential with better speed, efficiency, scalability, and security. This is drawing more eyes to Ethereum, including investors who are looking to diversify their cryptocurrency portfolios.
As well, Ethereum is key to decentralized finance, since many DeFi protocols run on Ethereum smart contracts. Therefore, Ethereum plays an integral role in the creation of decentralized financial services such as loans, insurance, and higher interest rates for saving. Developers are also launching NFTs on Ethereum, which has garnered a lot of media attention recently. Both DeFi and NFTs show that Ethereum is more than its currency for transactions.
Once the upgrades are complete, I think that we’ll see the value of Ethereum easily soar past $10,000. The use-cases for Ethereum are way more compelling than what Bitcoin has to offer. So, I think that it’s inevitable that Ethereum will outperform Bitcoin in the long run. “
Marie Tatibouet, CMO Gate.io
Bitcoin market dominance has dropped below 40% for the first time since June 2018. While some may see this as a negative indicator, it shows that the crypto market is becoming more mature. The average crypto investor is willing to look at the other coins (aka altcoins) in the ecosystem. Ethereum, in particular, has grown by leaps and bounds.
Ethereum was originally envisioned as a decentralized, global supercomputer that allows developers from all over the world to rent resources and create decentralized apps (dApps). This system has given rise to the ~$80 billion DeFi ecosystem.
In fact, consider this, there are three systems worth over $10 billion (Maker, Compound, and Aave) built on top of Ethereum right now! Ethereum-based decentralized exchanges (DEXs) Uniswap has done over $7 billion in trading volume.
Speaking of users, the number of active DeFi users has crossed 2 million, while the number MetaMask’s monthly active users have shot past 5 million. All this shows us that not only is there a lot of money involved in the ecosystem, but user activity has also gone through the roof.
Now, what does this say about ETH’s price? For this, let’s first understand how Metcalfe’s Law works. The law states that the value of a network is proportional to the number of users of the network. Since the number of users is steadily rising due to the DeFi and NFT economy, it is a very bullish sign for Ethereum.
Also, keep in mind that the Ethereum 2.0 update is right around the corner, which will solve many of the existing blockchain’s flaws, such as lack of scalability and overall throughput via proof-of-stake implementation and sharding. This is not all pure speculation, of course. Let’s look at what the super whale addresses holding at least 10,000 ETH think, For this, we will refer to Santiment.
So, while the mid-tier addresses seem to be content selling off their tokens, the whales don’t seem to be in the mood to drop their holdings any time soon. In fact, they are in steady accumulation mode as they get ready for the next jump.
Alright, so exactly how high will the Ethereum price go. Ethereum seems to have encountered a heavy resistance barrier at the 20-day SMA ($3,500) in the daily price chart. If ETH overcomes this barrier, it could reach the $3,800 level and the $4,000 level. After that, ETH could aim to take down ATH ($4,362.35) and aim for the $5,000 psychological level.
However, if the bulls fail to break past the 20-day SMA, it will crash down. The next significant support is at the 50-day SMA, which is all the way down at $2,745.
Adam Morris, Co-Founder at Cryptohead.io
“It’s very unlikely that Bitcoin will lose market dominance in the near future. The altcoin market performs much better during a bull-run, in the 2017 bull-run Ethereum peaked at 31.17% market dominance.
Currently Ethereum is hovering around 19% so it’s currently nowhere near the previous peak. It’s definitely possible that Ethereum may get back to the market dominance levels of 2017.”
Zak Killermann, Fintech and crypto writer, Finder
When Vitalik Buterin launched the Ethereum network in 2015 he had many, many plans. Those plans are what we call network upgrades, and unlike the majority of other cryptocurrencies — Ethereum often follows through on them.
Ethereum is one of the most actively used cryptocurrencies and as it continues to near Eth2.0, the price has steadily climbed from the former ATH of ~$1,200 in 2018 to more than $4k in May. So how exactly are the Eth2.0 upgrades impacting the network? In short, they are clear indications of current and future technical improvements, taking an already solid blockchain into the future of what is possible.
Ether hit a new ATH when it officially started the Eth2.0 upgrade that’ll take the chain from PoW to PoS, but the process won’t even complete until late 2021 (estimated). Following the eventual network update to Eth2.0, the Ethereum team has many more upgrades planned: in short, PoS is just the start of a long technological journey.
If Ethereum continues to be upgraded and Bitcoin remains fairly stagnant, it should only be a matter of time until we see BTC dethroned — but the future of Ether lies in the punctuality of its updates, something the dev team has struggled with in the past.
James Edwards, Cryptocurrency Writer at Finder.com
“We’re currently witnessing the rise of Ethereum, with its market value breaking all time highs and flying past the $4,000 mark earlier this month.
In Finder’s latest cryptocurrency predictions report, our panel forecasts ETH still has room to grow in 2021, with an average forecast of US$4,512 by the end of this year. Looking further to the end of 2025, our panel thinks Ethereum has room to reach just under $20,000.
“This growth can largely be attributed to a few inherent advantages Ethereum has over Bitcoin. For instance 70% of Finder’s panel say DeFi and NFTs have given Ethereum a stronger use case than Bitcoin. Not only that, but 51% say Ethereum will be the most widely transacted currency by the end of 2022.
“We could also start to see institutional investors take up Ethereum in the same way they’ve taken to Bitcoin, according to 77% of panellists who anticipate widespread institutional adoption.
“Of course all digital currencies carry some risk, and Ethereum is no exception. Some panellists noted that Ethereum lacks the same scarcity benefits as Bitcoin, which could hinder its growth long term. The panel also raised concerns about the makeup of Ethereum’s ownership, with recent data suggesting large ETH investors own about 70% of total supply.
“Ethereum has a few hurdles to jump over, but if it overcomes these challenges, we could see the ETH’s value reach far beyond its recent ATHs.”
