Will Ethereum Surpass Bitcoin in 2021?
Recently, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have made a stunning comeback. This has reenergized an otherwise sluggish crypto market. Recently, Bitcoin's price increased by over 30 percent, while Ethereum's price rose more than 20 percent. By 2021, Ethereum's price is expected to grow by a factor of two to $4,600, according to a panel of experts.
This may change over time, as Ethereum begins to develop new use cases that Bitcoin cannot match, said panelist Daniel Polotsky, founder of CoinFlip. As a result, its value may increase quicker than Bitcoin's.
In their positive forecasts, many panelists cited Ethereum's long-awaited improvements, aimed to enhance the cryptocurrency's scalability and efficiency, which began at the end of 2020.
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin suggested earlier this year that updates that would destroy (or "burn") ether tokens might make Ethereum more "stable" than Bitcoin.
Token Metrics senior cryptocurrency investment researcher Forrest Przybysz believes that Ethereum's supply will become deflationary when it switches to proof-of-stake later this year or in early 2022. As a result, it will be a superior store of wealth than Bitcoin, in addition to all the other benefits it offers that Bitcoin does not.
Ethereum may be valued at $4,596 by 2021, according to a panel of 42 cryptocurrency experts and academics assembled by personal finance comparison site Finder. Ethereum may reach $17,810 by the end of 2025 and $71,763 by the end of 2030, according to the panel.
Bitcoin will surpass the U.S. dollar as the primary form of global money by the year 2050, according to Finder's panel of experts.
Martin Fröhler, the chief executive of crypto brokerage Morpher, and Pedro Febrero, the head of the blockchain at fantasy football marketplace RealFevr, both predicted that Ethereum will surpass $10,000 by December 2025, according to panelists. According to Fröhler, "Ethereum is poised to power the future global financial infrastructure."
Nevertheless, not all of the experts are optimistic about the future of Ethereum. In 2021, John Hawkins, senior lecturer at the University of Canberra, predicts that Ethereum's price would reach $1,200. Ethereum, according to Hawkins, is "a speculative bubble that will be driven down by Bitcoin."
Ethereum has just over 750,000 active addresses, around 50,000 more than Bitcoin. This may be interpreted as a pessimistic indication of Bitcoin's price. Ethereum's daily address count surpassed Bitcoin's for the first time, crypto analytics firm Santiment said on Twitter.
Demand for Ethereum was also fuelled by the NFT (non-fungible token) mania, which has seen a wide range of memes, digital artwork, and YouTube videos traded over Ethereum's blockchain.
According to the chief investment officer of the $100 million digital asset company Two Prime, Ethereum will ultimately "flip" Bitcoin.
As Ethereum begins its long-awaited shift away from Bitcoin's solid evidence testing procedure to the more energy-efficient proof-of-stake, the DeFi boom is enabling competitor cryptocurrencies such as Cardano, Binance's BNB, Polkadot, and Solana to expand by thousands of percent.
Ethereum's change to proof-of-stake will drive crypto adoption, JPMorgan said in research originally published by Forbes. Staking lowers the opportunity cost of owning cryptocurrency compared to other asset classes, JPMorgan analysts said.
This year, the price of Ethereum has already risen by more than 330 percent. Ether was valued at $735 on Jan. 1 On May 12, it reached a high of almost $4,300 but has since dropped in subsequent weeks. In spite of the dip, Ethereum is still up 30 percent month-over-month.
Everyone is looking for the next Bitcoin after Bitcoin's meteoric rise, and Ethereum is a good option. Bitcoin is already 12 years old, while Ethereum is only six.
The market has evolved so much since then that it's not totally fair to compare Bitcoin's price at the same stage. Bitcoin and the rest of the market also benefit from a rise in Bitcoin's value, including Ethereum. The value of Bitcoin in 2015, when it was likewise six years old, was around $250. The price of Ethereum is close to $3,000.
As a result, Bitcoin has been on a downward trend in recent weeks while Ethereum has achieved new highs. As a result, the market is beginning to realize that Bitcoin and Ethereum are significantly different in their purpose and functionality. Many individuals are beginning to regard Bitcoin as a sort of digital gold. But, it can't accomplish much more than what it currently does. In addition, there are worries regarding Bitcoin's carbon imprint.
Ethereum, on the other hand, has plenty of opportunities to develop. DeFi and smart contracts are only just beginning to be used in business. To fulfill the growing demand and to transition to a more sustainable mining strategy, Eth 2 will aid the platform.
As a whole, the cryptocurrency sector faces a number of challenges. As a result, they are very volatile and unpredictable. The price of Ethereum or Bitcoin is expected to continue to increase, but there are experts who believe this is a bubble that might burst.
You should only invest money that you can afford to lose, and you should invest for the long term as a result. It's important to be able to hold on to Ethereum if the market dips and the price increases again. As a result, you may have to sell your home at a loss in order to pay your rent or cover an emergency.
Depending on your investing goals and risk tolerance, Ethereum may not be the next Bitcoin, but it might still be a good pick. Even if Eth 2 doesn't perform as promised or if the U.S. introduces tight cryptocurrency legislation, anything may happen.