Ethereum to outperform Bitcoin for rest of 2021, Finder panel predicts

Ethereum will likely outperform Bitcoin through the end of the year, an expert panel has predicted.

The 27 experts on a 42-member panel who gave price predictions for Ether gave an average price of US$4,596 per Ether by 31 December 2021. Their average price for 2025 was US$17,810, and US$71,763 by the end of 2030.

The predictions are contained in Finder’s Ethereum Price Prediction Report, issued last week.

Panellists on average predicted Bitcoin would hit US$66,284 by year-end, a rise of 78 per cent over yesterday afternoon’s price. Their prediction for Ether would be a 109 per cent rise.

CoinFlip founder and chief advisor Daniel Polotsky gave forecasts in line with the panel average, predicting ETH will be worth US$4,000 by the end of the year and skyrocket to $64,000 by 2030.

“Ethereum‘s price largely follows Bitcoin’s halving cycles, although that relationship may begin to decouple as time goes on, and as Ethereum continues to develop use cases that Bitcoin cannot achieve. Then, its price may grow at a faster rate than Bitcoin’s,” he said.

Morpher CEO Martin Fröhler and RealFevr’s head of blockchain Pedro Febrero were even more bullish, forecasting Ether would top US$10,000 by December 2021.

“Ethereum has the potential to power the future global financial infrastructure,” said Fröhler.

Nearly all the panellists, 93 per cent, predicted ETH will eventually be more frequently transacted than BTC. Just shy of half of them expect this to happen before the end of 2022.

But while 56 per cent of the panel say ETH will retain its DeFi dominance, 27 per cent are unsure and 17 per cent disagree.

CoinSmart CEO Justin Hartzman is one who thinks ETH will keep dominating DeFi, and says it’ll be more heavily transacted than BTC as soon as next year.

“… People don’t like transacting with BTC since it’s more of a store of value. Ethereum, on the other hand, has built a full-on multi-billion dollar ecosystem so the frequency of ETH transactions is definitely going to be a lot more.”

Two-thirds of the panel predicted ETH would eventually overtake BTC as the biggest currency by market capitalisation — with a majority (58 per cent) saying it will happen in the next five years.

Token Metrics senior cryptocurrency investment analyst Forrest Przybysz thinks ETH will be worth $8,000 by the end of the year and the “flippenning” will happen in 2022.

“Ethereum‘s move to proof-of-stake later this year or early 2022 will result in Ethereum‘s supply becoming deflationary and will be equivalent to multiple ‘Bitcoin Halvings’ in terms of supply restriction.

“This will make it a better store of value than Bitcoin in addition to all the utility it provides that Bitcoin does not have,” he said.

University of Western Australia associate professor of finance Lee Smales says the usefulness of ETH will inevitably lead to it surpassing BTC’s market cap:

“Fundamentally, Ethereum is more ‘useful’ and so has greater utility than Bitcoin. Ultimately, this should lead to its value exceeding that of Bitcoin.”

The entire of the Finder report can be read here.