Dado Ruvic/Reuters
Ether recorded its biggest one-day gain in two years on Monday, as the world’s second-largest currency smashed past $4,000 for the first time.
Ethereum’s digital token rose 7% in the last 24 hours to trade around $4,165 as of 5.20. a.m. ET, according to data from CoinMarketCap. This new milestone was achieved after ether saw a 16% increase in value in just five days.
This new momentum is likely being driven by asset manager VanEck filing to list an Ethereum exchange-traded-fund. The firm has already applied to list a bitcoin ETF, for which the SEC has delayed its decision until July.
More investors are betting ether will be fueled by a rise in the use of decentralized finance applications and non-fungible tokens. Rival currency bitcoin is up 1% in the past week. Insider spoke to 10 experts about which of the two they’d rather invest in, and why.
When ether was trading at around $1,200, crypto analyst Megan Kaspar predicted it would hit $3,400. Kaspar, co-founder of digital asset investment company Magnetic, has now boosted her price target to between $8,000 and $10,000 price range by the end of 2021.
She told Yahoo Finance Live the Ethereum network upgrade to a less-energy intensive method than bitcoin’s, called proof of work, could boost its value even further.
“The shift to proof of stake for block validation reduces carbon emissions by 99.9%, making Ethereum a green technology,” Kaspar said. “So these two updates on the network alone could push Ethereum to a trillion dollar market cap which is where bitcoin is at today – that would make Ethereum around $8,000 to $10,000 a coin.”
Her prediction matches that of Fundstrat Global Advisors’ head of digital assets research, David Grider. Grider expects ether to hit $10,500 by the end of the year based on market data.
Fundstrat Global Advisors
An even more bullish former Ark Invest analyst James Wang has predicted a $40,000 price target for ether. The boom in DeFi applications is the major catalyst for him too, as he believes the $3 trillion global banking-and-auditing industry could be more efficient with software.
“So that’s $3 trillion of existing revenues up for grabs,” he said. “If Ethereum captures just 1% of that economic revenue, ether would be around $40,000.”