[10/5/2021, 5pm] Back in January, when the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, ethereum, was trading at just over $1,200, one investor made the bold call of predicting a spike to the mid-$3,000 level, claiming it was being “overlooked” by investors.
Just under five months later, that prediction has already hit with ethereum (ETH) up roughly 400% on the year to cross the $3,500 USD mark as of Friday afternoon. Now, that same investor, Megan Kaspar, co-founder of the digital asset investment company Magnetic, is upping her price target to the $8,000 to $10,000 price range by year’s end.
Kaspar explained her thesis citing new updates coming to the cryptocurrency’s network later this year. The network is planning a shift away from the same method used by bitcoin (BTC) to confirm transactions to one that is far less energy intensive. Unlike bitcoin’s so-called proof of work, which rewards miners who are competing against each other to use computers and energy to record and confirm transactions on its blockchain, ethereum plans to adopt the more efficient proof of stake model, which chooses a block validator at random based on how much ether it controls.
“The shift to proof of stake for block validation reduces carbon emissions by 99.9%, making ethereum a green technology,” Kaspar explained. “So these two updates on the network alone could push ethereum to a trillion dollar market cap which is where bitcoin is at today — that would make ethereum around $8,000 to $10,000 a coin.” [Read more]
