8 months ago
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The movement of Ethereum (ETH) price has closely mirrored that of Bitcoin, thus raising optimism for ETH’s revisiting ATH soon.
Ethereum (ETH), the leading layer-one (L1) blockchain with the lion’s share in the stablecoins market and more than $54 billion in Total Value Locked (TVL), has significantly benefited from the mass adoption of digital assets and web3 protocols by institutional investors. Ethereum price has gained about 71 percent in the past few weeks to trade around $3,794 on Thursday, during the early London session.
As a result, it is safe to assume Ethereum (ETH) price is in the early stages of the macro bull run and more gains will be registered in the near term. Furthermore, Ethereum smart contracts and its layer two (L2) scaling solutions have dominated the web3 industry.
Ethereum (ETH) Price: Road to $10,000
The Ethereum core developers led by co-founder Vitalik Buterin have been working on both the settlement and the consensus layers to ensure mass adoption of ETH. Moreover, the Ethereum network faces heavy competition from other layer-one blockchains like Solana (SOL), Cardano (ADA), and BSC, among others.
Meanwhile, the Ethereum network is preparing for high-impact events in the near term, which could trigger a parabolic rally beyond ETH’s ATH.
US Spot Ether ETF Debate
The approval of several spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in the United States earlier this year has yielded tangible benefits to the crypto market. Billions of dollars have proliferated into the Bitcoin investment products, which has triggered a huge imbalance in the demand vs supply.
The notable success of the spot Bitcoin ETFs has raised optimism for the inevitable approval of spot Ethereum ETFs in the United States. Moreover, the same fund managers who applied and received the green light to offer spot Bitcoin ETFs led by BlackRock Inc (NYSE: BLK) are now in the race to offer spot Ether ETFs.
Additionally, the same conditions that led to the approval of spot Bitcoin ETFs including court and legal pressure could play out on the spot Ether ETFs.
Upcoming Network Upgrade
After successfully transitioning from the proof-of-work (PoW) consensus method to the proof-of-stake (PoS) method through the merge event and the Shanghai upgrade, the Ethereum network is now preparing for the next major upgrade.
The Dencun upgrade, which is expected to be activated on the mainnet on March 13, 2024, has undergone thorough testing in the past year to ensure seamless integration.
Notably, the upcoming Dencun upgrade will introduce several changes but the most notable one is the introduction of ephemeral data blobs with EIP-4844, via proto-danksharding, which will help reduce L2 transaction fees.
Naysayers
Despite the palpable growth in the Ethereum network, some experts are not convinced of the inevitable approval of the spot Ethereum ETFs. According to senior ETF analyst at Bloomberg, Eric Balchunas, the Ethereum network is incomparable to the Bitcoin network with respect to institutional adoptions.
Yeah @JSeyff and I will have formal odds out soon but tbh and no offense to the eth ppl but this is such small potatoes vs spot bitcoin ETFs. It's like the opening act coming on after the headliner. Using GenX bands it's like Sister Hazel trying to follow Nirvana.
— Eric Balchunas (@EricBalchunas) March 2, 2024
Similar sentiments were expressed by Ben Caselin, CMO of VALR cryptocurrency exchange, who added that the Ethereum network could be dethroned due to its high transaction costs during network congestion.
