The price of Ethereum’s native token ETH could drop to a low of USD 675 – and rise to a high of USD 2,673 – before ending the year at USD 1,711, according to a panel of crypto industry professionals surveyed by comparison website Finder.com.
According to an average of the responses given by the panelists, ETH is facing five months of exceptional volatility, with both a 57% drop and 68% gain from the current price likely to happen, before the price ends the year at USD 1,711 – around 7% higher than the current price.
At the time of writing (14:25 UTC), ETH traded at USD 1,604. The token is up 4% in a day and nearly 54% in a week.
Many panelists pointed to the Merge – Ethereum’s transition from the proof-of-work (PoW) to the proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus mechanism – as critical for the asset’s price going forward.
Ben Ritchie, managing director of Digital Capital Management, said that,
“Since Ethereum’s correlation to bitcoin is still high, we can speculate that if Merge happens before the year-end, its price may decouple [from the rest of crypto]. However, the outside economic factor is vital, bringing hurdles to the short-term price action.”
A similar sentiment was shared by Kevin He, chief operating officer of fintech firm CloudTech Group.
“If Ethereum successfully completes the merger this year, we expect the price to rise because PoS and faster [transactions per second] lead to higher demand for ETH from miners, investors and Dapp users, and if the market woes are alleviated in the second half of the year, it is possible for ETH price to rise to the previous high or break the previous high due to the rising demand,” he said.
Others also concurred, with Joseph Raczynski, a technologist and futurist for Thomson Reuters, saying the Merge “is not priced into [ETH]” yet.
“[Ethereum] still supports hundreds of billions of dollars in transactions and value, with thousands of tokens. At this stage, Ethereum is still the blue blood of the crypto world,” Raczynski opined.
Looking further out, the average of the panelists’ responses indicated a price for year-end 2025 of USD 5,739, and for 2030 of USD 14,412.
And although that may sound bullish, it still marks a significant downgrade in the price predictions compared to earlier surveys by the panel from January and April this year.
In April, the panel predicted ETH would reach USD 11,764 by the end of 2025 and USD 23,372 by the end of 2030. In January, panelists were also bullish, predicting a year-end price for 2025 of USD 10,810 and for 2030 of USD 26,338.
As previously reported by Cryptonews.com, similar downgrades have also been seen in Finder.com’s bitcoin price predictions. As recently as April, Finder.com’s panel predicted BTC would end the year at USD 65,185. Then, in July, the panel downgraded this prediction, saying that a year-end price of USD 25,500 is more likely.
Finder.com’s panel is made up of various crypto industry players, including analysts, founders, CEOs, and academics in the field.
Source:cryptonews.com