Developments around Ethereum like the upcoming Ethereum futures on CME, increased institutional ETH interest on Grayscale, and growth of the DeFi sector which is mainly driven by Ethereum-based DApps, will see the price of ETH skyrocket to at least $10K.
This is according to crypto analyst Lark Davis who said that these developments among others like the recent approval of stablecoins by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) will inevitably raise ETH’s value exponentially.
“Ethereum futures coming soon, grayscale already seeing first/eth only investors, occ greenlit stablecoin, eip 1559, layer 2, defi…. Yeah, ETH is going to hit at least 10K.”
CME to Launch ETH Futures in Early February
Less than a month ago, The Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), announced that it will launch a futures contract on Ether (ETH) starting from February 8, 2021.
CME is one of the world’s leading, most diverse, and regulated derivatives marketplaces that was also the first to launch Bitcoin futures in December 2017 together with the Chicago Board of Options Exchange (CBOE).
Each ETH futures contract will have 50 ETH units and the products will be open for trading from Sunday to Friday between 5:00pm to 4:00pm CT.
The contracts will also be based on CMF CF, the FCA-approved ether-dollar reference rate from CF Benchmarks.
“Ether is based on blockchain technology and the CME CF Ether-Dollar Reference Rate provides a standardized reference rate to bring confidence to any trading strategy.”
According to CME, the decision to launch an ETH futures contract stems from the immense success derived from bitcoin futures. Futures contracts are well known in the traditional derivatives market but are a relatively new concept in the crypto market. They allow investors to buy (long) or sell (short) an asset for a predetermined price on a future date.
When the contract expires, the trade executes automatically regardless of the current market price of the asset. Investors use futures contracts to minimize risk and they can be executed via an exchange or smart contracts.
ETH Success Depends on ETH 2.0
As earlier reported, 2% of total ETH supply is currently staked on ETH 2.0 following its scheduled Mainnet launch on December 1st. Data from BeaconScan shows that the number of Beacon Chain validators has risen by 62% from 27,507 during launch time to 72,294 validators.
While investors seem to be optimistic about ETH’s value, the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency is still in the midst of a huge technological transition whose success rate might break or make its future.
Meanwhile, ETH is up by 12.73% on the day, trading at $1,338 and with a market cap of $152 billion, which puts it at position 87 on the list of the world’s most highly-priced assets.
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