The Bull Market Charge (Part 2): Ethereum's Dawn Approaches, $10,000 Is No Dream
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The Bull Market Charge (Part 2): Ethereum's Dawn Approaches, $10,000 Is No Dream
When mountains and rivers seem to block the way, willows darken and flowers brighten as another village appears.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsBy Anderson Sima, Foresight News
From the beginning of 2024 until now, if many crypto believers were to list the most disappointing crypto assets, Ethereum would undoubtedly top the chart.
During the previous cycle, Ethereum shone brightly thanks to new applications like DeFi and NFTs, reaching a historical high of $4,800 and delivering wealth-generating gains exceeding 20x. As Bitcoin surged ahead, expectations for the "second place" asset reached their peak.
However, in this new cycle, while Bitcoin has broken through $90,000, Ethereum has barely stabilized around the $3,000 mark. After briefly challenging $4,000 early in the year, it even dropped back down to $2,200—trapping countless crypto investors who had eagerly anticipated Ethereum's rise. Even savvy figures like "Brother Sun" got caught in the dip, showing that institutional investors are not immune. Currently, the ETH/BTC exchange rate has fallen to a historic low of 0.034.
Yet as the old saying goes: “When mountains pile up and rivers wind endlessly, one might doubt there’s any way forward—until suddenly, beyond the dark willows and blooming flowers, lies another village.”
The author believes that Ethereum’s current struggles represent an inevitable phase in the early development of the Web3 industry. While Bitcoin dominates consensus as digital gold, Ethereum’s vision of becoming a “world computer” faces structural contradictions, preventing its market value from resonating with expectations and failing to deliver short-term value realization. But I believe all these difficulties are essentially paper tigers, and we are now standing at the dawn of a new era.
Ethereum's Challenges
A fundamental difference between this bull market and the previous two is that Ethereum has not led technological innovation. Compared to the ICO frenzy of 2017 or the DeFi Summer of 2020, the biggest trend in this cycle has been Memes—and most Meme communities have gravitated toward Solana. Meanwhile, concepts pioneered by Ethereum such as Layer2 and Restaking have paradoxically created some negative side effects on the Ethereum ecosystem.
While over a hundred Layer2 ecosystems have improved Ethereum’s transaction experience and performance, they’ve also caused severe user and capital fragmentation. The post-upgrade reduction in blob fees has likewise weakened Ethereum’s economic model and staking yields. With declining ETH demand and slower-than-expected burn rates, Ethereum has begun experiencing inflation, undermining its store-of-value potential. At the same time, Bitcoin maintains an irreplaceable appeal to institutional investors in the realm of value storage, making the recently launched spot ETH ETF seem underwhelming.
On the other hand, Vitalik Buterin, as a community leader, exerts deep influence shaped by rationalism across the entire ecosystem. Vitalik holds an ambitious long-term vision for Ethereum’s future, recently publishing several lengthy articles exploring ways to achieve decentralization, security, and scalability.
But from a community standpoint, some of these goals appear overly idealistic and significantly out of step with current technical limitations and market expectations. Moreover, Vitalik wields disproportionate influence over governance and decision-making within the Ethereum community—a reality at odds with the ideal of decentralization. This may result in less democratic and distributed decision processes, causing community voices to be unintentionally overlooked. Compared to the broader pursuit of wealth-generation strategies, Vitalik can seem strikingly disconnected from practical realities.
But isn’t that exactly who Vitalik is? The same young man who once shed tears when Blizzard nerfed a Warlock ability, then stormed into the blockchain world to create Ethereum. If Vitalik were to transform into a constant shiller, reveling in newfound riches, *that* would truly be the moment the Ethereum community should fear FUD.
The Dawn Is Here
Despite the attention drawn by Meme culture and Solana’s rise during this cycle, it doesn’t mean Ethereum lacks technological innovation. Although Layer2 and Restaking pose short-term challenges, in the long run, they lay the foundation for Ethereum’s sustainable growth. By reducing transaction costs and increasing speed, Layer2 solutions make Ethereum more viable for large-scale applications—an essential factor in attracting users and developers. Staking mechanisms incentivize ETH holders to participate in network security, enhancing both decentralization and resilience.
Regarding concerns about weakening ETH demand and inflationary pressure, the Ethereum community and developers are actively seeking solutions. Discussions are underway to further refine EIP-1559, optimizing the burning and issuance mechanics of ETH.
While Bitcoin holds strong appeal as a store of value among institutional investors, Ethereum offers a far more comprehensive ecosystem—including smart contracts, DeFi, NFTs, and more. Ethereum and Bitcoin are complementary in many aspects rather than simple competitors. Ethereum’s versatility gives it a unique position in the crypto space, supporting a broader range of use cases than any other blockchain. This advantage is unmatched—so-called “Ethereum killers” exist largely because Ethereum itself faces internal challenges, not because other chains can genuinely replace it.
Ethereum’s hope lies in its continuous technological advancement, robust developer community, and adaptability to emerging market demands. In this cycle, Ethereum must balance its focus on long-term sustainability with real-world, deployable commercial applications—each serving as a stepping stone toward enduring success.
$10,000 Is Not a Dream
I dare predict that before the U.S. midterm elections in 2026, Ethereum could break $10,000. Analyst Kendrick from Standard Chartered reaffirmed the bank’s 2025 price targets: $200,000 for Bitcoin and $10,000 for Ethereum.
As the U.S. political landscape shifts and figures like Trump express support for the crypto market, significant traditional capital is flowing into the sector. Once mainstream capital fully enters the crypto market, Ethereum—as a major crypto asset with a spot ETF—will likely attract heightened investor attention.
Data from Farside Investors shows that on November 12, U.S.-listed spot Ethereum ETFs recorded a net inflow of $134.4 million—the best single-day performance in history.
The launch of spot Ethereum ETFs provides crucial financial support for price appreciation. Traditional ETF investors tend to be long-term holders, and the increased liquidity from spot ETFs boosts overall demand for Ethereum. For investors already holding Bitcoin, Ethereum—with its innovation potential and powerful ecosystem—represents one of the best gateways into the broader crypto economy, accelerating its adoption as a mainstream investment vehicle.
As for the Layer2 fragmentation issue, as Ethereum mainnet user experience improves and competition among L2s begins to settle, we may see greater integration of L2 solutions back into Ethereum’s core network. Successful progress in this area will strengthen traffic and gas fee revenues for Ethereum, alleviating inflationary pressures and stabilizing its economic model.
We expect substantial implementation of Ethereum’s L2 consolidation to begin in the first half of 2025. Some Layer2 projects will be phased out, while integration efforts draw developers and users back to the mainnet, fueling ecosystem revival. During this phase, prices could stabilize between $3,000 and $5,000.
In the coming years, innovative applications such as PayFi and RWA are expected to grow steadily, especially as smart contract capabilities improve and L2 solutions mature. More complex financial applications will emerge, reigniting market demand for Ethereum.
For example, cross-chain liquidity aggregation based on L2s and the maturation of on-chain financial derivatives markets will generate massive transaction volumes, further reinforcing Ethereum’s value. RWA integration and payment systems interacting with traditional assets hold particular promise as killer applications. By late 2025, these emerging use cases could push Ethereum’s value into the $6,000–$8,000 range.
Meanwhile, as pro-crypto political figures like Trump gain influence in the U.S., the domestic regulatory environment for cryptocurrencies is expected to gradually loosen. Additionally, global economic slowdowns and rising fiat inflation risks will drive more investors toward digital assets as hedges, further increasing demand across the crypto market.
If the U.S. and other major economies progressively relax crypto regulations over the next 1–2 years, and global demand for inflation and currency devaluation hedging rises, this macro backdrop will strongly support upward momentum in Ethereum’s price. Under favorable market conditions by early 2026, Ethereum could experience a major price breakout, potentially surpassing the $10,000 milestone.
Recently, Vitalik gave an exclusive interview to Foresight News, where he said something worth remembering: “The only way Ethereum fails as an asset is if no one knows about it. So in that sense, Ethereum cannot afford to become invisible background infrastructure.” Ethereum’s ambition—is known.
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