Ethereum is more than just another blockchain—it’s fueling a new paradigm of computing, powering thousands of decentralized applications. While Ether first traded at $2.77, it’s now fluctuating around $3,000. Of course, with crypto’s volatility, that number may be wildly different by the time you’re reading this article.
At the start of 2021, Ether was hovering around $1,000. In other words, it has tripled since then, and it’ll need to triple again to reach $10,000. That said, higher prices get harder and harder to reach, so it won’t be a straight rocket to $10,000.
In short, Ether won’t reach $10,000 in 2021. After all, that would require the influx of several hundred billion dollars in less than half a year. That said, there are a few reasons to believe that Ether could reach $10,000 in the next five years.
One of them is the way Ethereum has been adopted by mainstream financial institutions and technology companies. Another one is that the network will handle more transactions as more developers build applications on top of it. And finally, if more people start using Ether as a currency, demand for Ether will go up and make it more valuable.
Let’s take a look at these reasons in detail.
Ethereum is reaching true mainstream adoption
In 2016, businesses started adopting Ethereum in droves. JPMorgan Chase became one of the first banks to announce that it was experimenting with Ethereum technology when it announced it was building a permissioned version of Ethereum called Quorum (which is more suitable for sensitive applications in banking).
This enterprise adoption seriously ramped up in 2017, with a number of other Fortune 500 firms hopping on the Ethereum bandwagon.
In 2019, Standard Chartered became another major bank to announce that it was working on projects involving Ethereum. This is just a small sample size; there are many other examples out there: Overstock announced that it would accept Ether; Microsoft offers the Ethereum blockchain as a service; and so on.
On top of all these mainstream business adoptions, tech giants like Google have also started exploring ways they could integrate Ethereum into their products or services. To give another example, Amazon Web Services offers a managed blockchain service for Ethereum.
All these developments mean that most large companies now have at least some experience working with Ethereum technology, and might consider using it for future projects or products.
Besides adoption by these corporate giants, popular startups are emerging on top of Ethereum, across hot sectors like decentralized finance, NFTs, and the metaverse. Next Earth is one such example. This startup is building a virtual replica of Earth on Ethereum, where users can buy and sell virtual land NFTs.
More developers are building applications on top of Ethereum
As we’ve explored, several big companies have started experimenting with Ethereum so far, but plenty of others haven’t yet jumped onto this bandwagon because they think developing decentralized apps will be difficult.
One of the main reasons for this is that Ethereum is still a relatively nascent technology, compared to traditional software engineering applications, which means there are relatively few Ethereum developers.
However, that’s quickly changing, with more and more traditional developers learning this technology. Further, last year there was far more Ethereum development activity than on any other blockchain. Indeed, Ethereum has the largest developer community of any blockchain out there.
There are also ever-more resources to learn Ethereum, from books to online courses or simply Telegram groups and YouTube videos.
More people are using Ether as a currency
The number of people using Ethereum’s native token, Ether, is growing rapidly. Looking at a long-term chart of Ethereum transactions per day, we can see that the network is steadily growing.
And this trend isn’t slowing down anytime soon: Every single day, there are tens of thousands (or even hundreds of thousands) of new Ethereum wallet addresses.
Part of what’s driving this is that more and more retailers are accepting Ether, and down the line, it’s possible that giants like Amazon could accept Ether, which would act as a tremendous propellant for the network.
This means that more and more people are getting exposed to Ethereum every day and could be interested in using it for their own purposes down the road.
Ultimately, Ethereum won’t reach $10,000 in 2021, but there’s nothing keeping it from reaching $10,000 a little later down the line. In fact, the opposite is true: The outlook for Ethereum has never looked so bright. There’s more adoption than ever before, and more and more investors are looking to investment alternatives like Ether.
