What Is Ethereum's Price Prediction for 2024?

Top analysts, outlets, and fund managers have priced Ethereum at an average of $6,404 by the end of 2024. All eight prediction issuers are bullish

After halving in value over the last year, Ethereum price predictions are now in focus, especially following the approval of physical Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in April 2024. While some expected the same to happen for Ethereum ETFs, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is yet to approve any spot-traded Ethereum ETFs.

Despite the delay in approving Ethereum ETFs, some interesting developments took place in the cryptocurrency market. For instance, Grayscale, the world’s largest digital currency asset manager, conducted a survey among funds that launched Bitcoin ETFs. The survey aimed to understand the funds' plans for launching Ethereum ETFs and investors' sentiments regarding the same.

The survey was conducted between April 30 and May 2, 2024, and the results were published in a report titled "The Grayscale State of Digital Assets Q2 22.” The report highlighted several key findings:

25% of respondents believe ETF approval will boost Ethereum capital inflows.

25% of respondents stated that Ethereum ETF approval will not impact investing theses.

43% of respondents said many funds will need to market spot-traded Ethereum ETFs.

The survey showed that a quarter of the respondents believe that the approval of spot-traded Ethereum ETFs will boost capital inflows into the cryptocurrency. However, another quarter of the respondents stated that such an approval will not impact investing theses in ETH.

Interestingly, 43% of the respondents highlighted that a lot of marketing will be required for spot-traded Ethereum ETFs, considering that many investors are still unaware of the concept. This could indicate a need for greater awareness campaigns among funds launching these ETFs.

On the regulatory front, efforts are being made to render ETH more decentralized, following the launch of Lido Staking Derivative Tokens (LSD) in Q1 2024. Taking the number one spot with a 29% staking share, Lido launched the Community Staking Module (CSM) to alleviate centralization concerns, leaving the “security” designation behind.

Meanwhile, the rights to 140,000 ETH, valued at $366 million at the time, were sold off by Mt. Gox creditors on April 10, 2024, via the Tokyo District Court. This development came after the creditors voted in favor of selling the remaining cryptocurrencies in December 2023. The creditors began receiving fiat currency repayments in July 2023.

This development marked the latest stage in the long-running saga of the Mt. Gox bankruptcy proceedings. The once-mighty cryptocurrency exchange filed for bankruptcy in 2014 after losing 850,000 BTC in a hack. Over the years, the court-appointed trustee has been working to recover and sell the remaining cryptocurrencies to compensate the creditors.

As of August 6, in the last 30 days, ETH's price plunged 15.5%, hovering around $2,600. This is reminiscent of the plunge that happened in April 2022 following the start of the Fed’s interest rate hiking cycle. This time, the Fed fund futures price in three rate cuts by the end of 2024, with the first one in September at an 82.7% probability. Depending on the severity of the need to stimulate the economy with rate cuts, this could be either a tailwind or a headwind.

If there is a hard landing leading to a deep recession, it is unlikely that this will help ETH capital inflows because weakened discretionary spending would cut them short. On top of that, the expected Bitcoin sell-off pressure from Mt. Gox repayments may put further pressure on ETH. Moreover, a couple of days after ETH ETF approvals, it became clear that “sell the news” pressure was afoot, as ETH's price dropped by over 10%.

On the upside, Ethereum is firmly positioned as not only the cryptocurrency tailing Bitcoin but also one with higher growth potential. Its reliance on Layer 2 networks, plus sharding, makes it the primary candidate to take in all the traffic from multiple use-case scenarios, per VanEck analysis.