The digital currency giants have changed. It is not impossible for Ethereum to surpass Bitcoin.

Source: Zhitong Finance Network

According to the latest forecast report from the overseas financial and crypto expert group (Finder), the price of Ethereum is expected to reach $4,596 by the end of this year. Ethereum is currently the second largest cryptocurrency after Bitcoin.

The team predicts that Ethereum will provide higher returns than Bitcoin this year, with Ethereum expected to grow 157% by the end of the year, while Bitcoin prices are expected to rise 122% to $66,284.

The group is also more optimistic about Ethereum’s medium- to long-term price, predicting that the price of Ethereum will rise to $17,810 by the end of 2025.

The panel, convened by Sydney-based data and analytics company Finder, consists of 42 fintech experts, including CoinGecko co-founder Bobby Ong, University of Western Australia associate professor of finance Lee Smales and Allnodes CEO and founder Konstantin Boyko-Romanovsky.

According to Finder, Boyko-Romanovsky predicted that Ethereum’s price will exceed $5,000 by the end of the year, noting that the reasons for the increase include “upgrading to deflationary assets, secondary networks, institutional adoption, mass usage, the continued development and rise of DeFi and decentralized applications, all of which are factors that will affect Ethereum’s future price appreciation.”

Will Ethereum replace Bitcoin?

58% of the group said that the moment when Ethereum’s overall market value surpasses Bitcoin could happen within the next five years.

Lee Smales, associate professor of finance at the University of Western Australia, believes that “fundamentally, Ethereum is more ‘useful’ and therefore more useful than Bitcoin,” and “ultimately, this will lead to Ethereum becoming more valuable than Bitcoin.”

About 10% of the panelists thought the flip could take longer — perhaps until 2040 or even later. However, a third of the experts believed that Ethereum’s market capitalization would never surpass Bitcoin’s.

“We believe Bitcoin will always be number one, but Ethereum’s market share will continue to grow,” said Nicholas Mancini, a research analyst at Transaction Chain.

Should you buy, sell or hold Ethereum now?

The majority of the Finder panel (63%) said now is the right time to buy Ethereum.

Paul Levy, a senior lecturer at Brighton Business School, predicts that Ethereum will have significant growth over Bitcoin due to its “reputation and underlying innovation in energy efficiency.”

But John Hawkins, a senior lecturer at the University of Canberra, disagrees, telling Finder that Ethereum is a “speculative bubble that will be dragged down by Bitcoin.”

In the Finder group, only one in ten people recommended selling Ethereum, while 27% said to hold.

While cryptocurrency prices have fallen from their highs earlier this year, the cryptocurrency market rebounded briefly on Monday, with Bitcoin nearing $40,000, after Amazon posted a job opening for a "head of digital currency and blockchain products" in its "payment acceptance and experience" team, sparking speculation that the company would enter the crypto space. Amazon has since denied that it will offer crypto payment services to its customers.

Justin Chuh, senior trader at Wave Financial, said Bitcoin and Ethereum opened the week with one of their biggest gains since May. “However, I don’t see volume matching the price action, but maybe we are in a new situation.”

“Bitcoin and Ethereum are still trading sideways, we are just trading at the higher end of the sideways trend now,” Chuh wrote. “Bitcoin has once again failed to break above the 200-day moving average, just like in early June… Ethereum is also facing familiar barriers at $2,400, and again at $2,800, and will likely remain highly correlated with Bitcoin.”