Let’s first look at the history of Ethereum. According to Coinmarketcap, the average highest price ever reached by ETH was $4,800 on November 10, 2021. Can we still have an Ethereum 10K price in 2022?
If each ETH coin was worth $10,000 right now, the market capitalization would be around $1.13 trillion, which might sound ridiculous considering Bitcoin’s highest market cap was around $330 billion. However, the current market capitalization of Apple is $2 trillion, followed by Microsoft and Amazon, both with $1.6 trillion each.
Clearly, reaching a $1 trillion market capitalization is difficult but far from impossible for an international digital asset like Ethereum.
How did Ethereum start?
The Ethereum mainnet was started in 2015. The biggest pioneers in the development of Ethereum were Vitalik Buterin, Gavin Wood and Jeffrey Wilke. The market capitalization grew very fast and it didn’t take too long that ETH was one of the biggest projects in the cryptocurrency space.
How does Ethereum work?
Ethereum started with the same consensus mechanism as Bitcoin did, the proof-of-work. But the project wants to shift to proof-of-stake. At Ethereum, this new protocol is named Casper. Unlike Bitcoin, Ethereum has a Turing-complete virtual machine. This machine can be used to create impactful decentralized programs, better known as smart contracts. These programs are written down on the blockchain with transactions. The users then should be able to access the features of these programs via transactions. With this, the conditions of the program can be changed depending on the logic and situations.
What is special about Ethereum Blockchain?
With its smart contract functions, Ethereum can be the basis for the development of decentralized applications (dApps). Since Ethereum was the first platform with smart contracts and thus a pioneer, the platform is the authority for developers of dApps. Ethereum has been a leader in DeFi and NFTs for years.
The Ethereum network is not perfect and has been struggling with technical challenges for years. A big problem are the high Ethereum transaction and gas fees, which are repeatedly criticized. Other networks like Cardano and Solana find better solutions in this area. With the transformation to Ethereum 2.0, Ethereum wants to solve problems such as high gas fees.
Why does Ethereum take fees?
As a blockchain network, Ethereum has to take fees from users. Users can buy and sell tokens on the blockchain. Furthermore, “complex” transactions can also be carried out, which makes DeFi applications and NFTs possible.
Since computing power has to be used for the transactions, this computing power has to be “paid for” for a transaction. Because of this, Ethereum has to take transaction fees from the users who execute transactions. In addition, due to the structure of the Ethereum network, there are so-called gas fees.
Ethereum 10K: Is this Feasible still?
So Ethereum could reach $10,000 realistically, but what are the technical indicators saying? The current price of ETH is around $2,940 after a wild 2021. Before the pandemic, the digital asset was trading at around $287 but had a huge crash towards $86 on March 13. People who bought back then are deeply in the green today.
Ethereum has recovered significantly from that low reaching a new 2021-high at around $4800 on November 11, 2021. The crypto market afterward crashed, as most cryptos became overbought and a correction was due since the start of the pandemic in 2020.
How Will ETH 2.0 Affect The Price?
One of the most anticipated upgrades in the history of blockchain is the upcoming ETH 2.0 update. The launch has been delayed several times in the past, however, investors are still patiently waiting.
One of the main characteristics of ETH 2.0 is the shift from the current Proof of Work consensus algorithm to Proof of Stake. There are other several improvements aimed at making Ethereum faster and more scalable.
The upgrade itself is likely to increase the demand for Ethereum because of faster transaction speeds and decreased costs. Most tokens are already being deployed on top of the Ethereum blockchain, which means that this upgrade will also have a positive effect on them.
Many analysts speculate that a successful upgrade could easily push Ethereum at least to its all-time high at $4,800. However, given all the positive metrics in favor of the digital asset and the continuous interest shown by institutional investors, we might reach an Ethereum 10K price.
