“The price of Ether (ETH), the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, could surge to $10,000 or even higher this year despite being overshadowed by Bitcoin (BTC) in recent months. This prediction comes from Juan Leon, a cryptocurrency research analyst at asset management firm Bitwise.
According to Leon, ETH may surpass its all-time high of $4,800 and potentially reach $10,000 due to catalysts such as the upcoming Dencun upgrade and the excitement surrounding the launch of Ethereum spot ETFs.
The highly anticipated Dencun upgrade is expected to enhance Ethereum’s layer-2 deployment efficiency through proto-danksharding or blob (EIP-4844). This upgrade marks the network’s biggest since Shapella in April 2023, enabling the withdrawal of staked ETH.
Proto-danksharding aims to reduce storage requirements by utilizing temporary storage space to achieve higher transaction throughput. This will enable access to off-chain data, reducing transaction costs on layer-2 networks by over 10 times. Both the Shapella and Dencun upgrades are pivotal steps in Ethereum’s transition from Proof-of-Work (PoW) to Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism.
Dencun has been successfully deployed on the Goerli, Sepolia, and Holesky testnets, with the mainnet launch scheduled for March 13.
Leon believes that the launch of Dencun on Ethereum will serve as a positive psychological catalyst to propel ETH to unprecedented highs. By reducing transaction costs on layer-2 networks, mainstream consumer activities and demand will increase.
Another catalyst that could drive ETH prices higher is the excitement surrounding the launch of Ethereum spot ETFs in the United States.
Several asset management companies, including BlackRock, Fidelity, Invesco, Galaxy Digital, VanEck, and Ark Invest, all of whom recently launched new Bitcoin spot ETFs, have filed similar products for Ethereum. However, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has pushed back their decision deadline to May.
Bitwise analysts speculate that the approval rate for Ethereum spot ETFs is not as high as that for Bitcoin ETFs, estimating a 50% to 60% likelihood of approval. Despite this, they believe that their launch is imminent and only a matter of time.”