Bitcoin and cryptocurrency prices have staged a remarkable recovery over the last week, reinvigorating a tired crypto market.
The bitcoin price has added almost 30% over the last week, with ethereum climbing more than 20%
Now, an expert crypto panel has predicted ethereum could be set to double in price to $4,600 by the end of 2021—an increase that would dwarf the panel’s bitcoin price prediction.
“Ethereum’s price largely follows bitcoin’s halving cycles, although that relationship may begin to decouple as time goes on, and as ethereum continues to develop use cases that bitcoin cannot achieve,” said panel memeber Daniel Polotsky, the founder of crypto ATM operator CoinFlip. “Its price may grow at a faster rate than bitcoin’s.”
Many panel members pointed to ethereum’s long-awaited upgrades, designed to improve ethereum’s scalability and efficiency, that were begun at the end of 2020 as the reason for their bullish predictions.
Earlier this year, ethereum cofounder Vitalik Buterin said upgrades that will destroy (or “burn”) ether tokens could mean ethereum becomes more “sound” than bitcoin.
“Ethereum’s move to proof-of-stake later this year or early 2022 will result in ethereum’s supply becoming deflationary and will be equivalent to multiple bitcoin halvings [cuts to bitcoin’s supply of new tokens] in terms of supply restriction,” said Token Metrics senior cryptocurrency investment analyst Forrest Przybysz, who thinks ethereum will be worth $8,000 by the end of the year.
“This will make it a better store of value than bitcoin in addition to all the utility it provides that bitcoin does not have.”
The panel average of 42 senior cryptocurrency specialists and academics, put together by personal finance comparison site Finder, predicted ethereum could be worth $4,596 by the end of 2021. Longer-term, the panel predicted ethereum could hit $17,810 by the end of 2025 and $71,763 by the end of 2030 while 68% of the panel say ethereum will surpass bitcoin eventually.
Earlier this month, Finder’s panel predicted bitcoin will overtake the U.S. dollar as the dominant form of global finance by the year 2050—putting the bitcoin price at just over $66,000 by the end of 2021.
Some panel members were even more bullish on ethereum’s outlook with both the chief executive of crypto brokerage Morpher, Martin Fröhler, and head of blockchain at fantasy football marketplace RealFevr, Pedro Febrero, forecasting ethereum will top $10,000 by December 2021.
“Ethereum has the potential to power the future global financial infrastructure,” said Fröhler.
Not all the panelists are upbeat about ethereum’s prospects, however. John Hawkins, senior lecturer at the University of Canberra puts ethereum’s price at $1,200 by the end of 2021, less than half its current $2,200.
“I think ethereum is a speculative bubble and will get dragged down by bitcoin,” said Hawkins.
