After hitting an all-time high of $4,800 in late 2024, Ethereum (ETH) and the rest of the crypto market plummeted to lows of $2,200 to begin the year. However, its price appears to be rising, as it is currently hovering around $3,320. What does the future hold for Ethereum? What will drive the increase in value?
What is Ethereum?
Ethereum is a blockchain with its own digital money, similar to Bitcoin. In reality, there are certain similarities between the two projects’ properties. Both coins, for example, are distributed. Bitcoin and Ethereum are not supported by any government or country. In addition, both digital currencies are based on blockchain technology, ensuring that all transactions are quick, accurate, and transparent.
The similarities, however, end there. Ethereum’s technology is capable of far more than just facilitating quick online transactions. Smart contract technology, for example, is available on Ethereum. This is a safe approach to signing digital contracts without establishing trust first. Ethereum’s exchanges are likewise quicker than Bitcoin’s, and its blockchain innovation can deal with more transactions. The majority of Ethereum buyers are doing so based on investment. That is, people buy cryptocurrency to profit from them.
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2024 Ethereum Price Prediction
ETH is at the heart of Bitcoin’s price activity, as is the rest of the market. As a result, ETH can aspire for a bull run if Bitcoin does.
ETH usually follows Bitcoin’s lead and rises. Because of the general growth in cryptocurrency values, ETH’s USD value will climb. The value of ETH relative to BTC is expected to fall. Still, Ethereum is one of the greatest bets for substantial gains, as money flows from Bitcoin winners to blue-chip altcoins and large-cap coins before trickling down to lesser-known and smaller projects.
Ether’s ROI is approximately 300 percent when calculated on a yearly basis. Since the summer of 2014, early investors have seen their money virtually treble in value every year. However, because cryptocurrency prices are notoriously unpredictable, financial experts advise just investing what you can stand to lose and never at the detriment of more important goals such as emergency savings and debt repayment.
Despite the difficulty of forecasting the price of a volatile cryptocurrency, ETH might break $4,000 once more in 2024.
How is Ethereum Growing?
Ether is the currency of the Ethereum network. Vitalik Buterin, its co-founder and programmer, first mentioned it in a white paper in 2015. Ethereum is based on blockchain technology, a distributed ledger that keeps track of a cryptocurrency’s account balances and transactions. Web3 development is also aided by Ethereum.
As financial services become more decentralized, multiple decentralized networks are likely to eat into the market share of incumbent financial intermediaries. According to the paper, Ethereum, the basic protocol, and Defi, the decentralized apps developed on top of Ethereum, will benefit from this transition. Ethereum, since it continues to be a basic feature of Defi apps, has a lot of potential in the next few years.
Reasons Behind the Popularity of Ethereum
There is no doubt that cryptocurrency investment has risen dramatically in recent years. Investors are looking for other cryptocurrencies to invest in, which started with Bitcoin. Ethereum is, without a doubt, one of the most well-known. We’ll explain why it’s so popular in the section below.
- Smart Contracts
When it comes to the advantages of Ethereum, there is only one place to start, and that is the smart contract functionality of this cryptocurrency, which we have already discussed. Ethereum was established as a platform for executing programmable smart contracts and applications using Ether, its cryptocurrency.
As the Ethereum blockchain can execute smart contracts that will empower DApps such as NFTs and Defi, we’ve seen use cases in the real world emerge and maintain value.
- Disinflationary Supply
The disinflationary supply that Ethereum provides is another reason for its popularity. Because Bitcoin has a finite number of 21 million coins, it is frequently used as an inflation hedge and a store of value.
This is one place where Ethereum and Bitcoin vary. Although Ethereum allows for an endless quantity of Ether to be created, the amount released each year through the mining process is limited. This eliminates the perception of scarcity, which may have contributed to bitcoin’s increased value.
The disinflationary process, which will continue to be adjusted as the network grows, increases the quantity of Ethereum. There is a fundamental change in the production of blocks with Ethereum’s new paradigm.
Validators will be paid a transaction fee for each smart contract and transaction they validate, rather than miners being paid for producing blocks. Because there will be fewer Ether in circulation if a large sum of Ether is staked, the value will rise. Apart from that, proof of stake eliminates the costs of mining, like hardware and electricity, implying that miners will sell less Ether.
- Proof-of-Stake
Another reason for Ethereum’s popularity is the Proof-of-Stake concept. Although Ethereum began as a proof-of-work model, similar to Bitcoin, it is now transitioning to a proof-of-stake model, receiving a lot of attention and only increasing interest in this cryptocurrency.
The significance of this is that it will drastically alter the rewards system. The current proof-of-work paradigm offers little to encourage collaboration or provide sanctions in the event of malevolent behavior.
Miners will be supplanted with exchange validators in a proof-of-stake architecture, on the other hand. There will be no cryptographic challenges to overcome as a result of this. A validator must hold Ether and put their entire Ether stake on the line to validate the block’s legitimacy. As a result, if malicious behavior occurs, the stake will be jeopardized.
Is Ethereum (ETH) a Smart Investment?
It’s a little disappointing that Ethereum usually comes in second to Bitcoin. Even then, second place isn’t that bad if you suppose there are thousands of cryptos. We can draw a nice line between why Ethereum is a good investment in the crypto market in 2024 and why it is not.
