Ethereum's Wall Street cheerleaders see rise to $250,000, call Bitcoin and gold 'dead capital'

An organisation committed to boosting Ethereum on Wall Street has revised its prediction for the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency.

Forget $80,000 Ether. One day, it could be worth a quarter-million dollars, the organisation argues in a new paper.

That figure comes from the combined market value of gold and Bitcoin — roughly $31.1 trillion, according to the paper — as well as the assumption that Ether is “better money” than either.

With 121 million Ether in circulation, a market value of $31.1 trillion would equate to each coin trading just above $262,000.

“The path to $250,000 depends on this being understood: ETH is not a technology bet,” the paper reads. “It is a superior monetary asset with an economic property that gold and Bitcoin strictly cannot replicate: it compounds.”

Founded in August 2024, Etherealize has emerged as one of Ethereum’s most vocal champions on Wall Street.

Supported by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin and the Ethereum Foundation, its mandate is simple: convince traditional financial institutions to adopt Ethereum-based products.

Etherealize’s earlier prediction, laid out last year in a paper entitled “The Bull Case for ETH,” was an attempt to change perception of Ethereum among traders who struggle to understand the cryptocurrency.

Bitcoin proponents believe the world’s biggest cryptocurrency is “digital gold,” the earlier paper noted. Ether should be understood as “digital oil powering the digital economy.”

The latest paper takes a new tack, positioning Ether as a bearer asset, like gold or Bitcoin, but one that comes with the benefit of yield.

“Productive money will outcompete dead capital,” it reads.

Citing nineteenth-century economist Carl Menger, the paper states that any quality monetary asset must be scarce, fungible, divisible, portable, durable, verifiable, and censorship resistant. It must also have an established history and low carrying cost.

“ETH matches or exceeds gold and Bitcoin on every one except established history,” the paper reads, calling the cryptocurrency “The first monetary asset that compounds without counterparty risk.”

Some of its arguments will be familiar to any Ethereum bull.

Bitcoin security comes from miner revenue, and Bitcoin transactions are not expected to compensate for the regular halving of block rewards. That will leave the network vulnerable to a 51% attack, the paper claims.

Moreover, Bitcoin developers’ resistance to making protocol changes means they will be slow to react to that and other threats, such as quantum computers. Concentration within the Bitcoin mining sector challenges its status as a censorship-resistant asset.

And, of course, unlike gold, Ether can be taken or sent anywhere so long as its destination has internet access and its owners remember their wallets’ 12-word seed phrase.

But the paper also argues that Ether has a higher floor than gold or Bitcoin, courtesy of decentralised finance.

Using another metaphor, the paper compares Ethereum to a toll road leading to the world of decentralised finance.

But that value proposition has taken a hit this month. Since April 1, more than $606 million in crypto has been lost to hacks, according to DefiLlama data. And the latest hack has severely affected Aave, the largest DeFi protocol, leading to dramatic outflows and a crisis of confidence within the industry.

The paper doesn’t provide a timeline for the $250,000 estimate, and cautions that it is “not a prediction.”

“It is a statement about what ETH would look like if the market agreed with the argument of this report,” it reads. “Whether the repricing happens in five years or twenty is unknowable.”

Aleks Gilbert is DL News’ New York-based DeFi correspondent. You can reach him at [email protected].