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Finder analyzes expert price predictions each quarter. We surveyed 21 crypto industry specialists in late December to early January 2026 to get their thoughts on how ether (ETH) will perform through 2035.
All prices mentioned in this report are denominated in US dollars.
On average, our panel thinks ether will be worth $5,026 by the end of 2026 before rising to $11,712 by year-end 2030 and then $21,856 by 2035.
ETH’s price is expected to rise to $5,026 by year-end 2026, according to the average prediction from Finder’s panelists. This prediction is a little more bearish than their end-of-2025 prediction of $5,034 in the October 2025 report.
The panelists also predict ETH will hit $11,712 by 2030 and $21,856 by 2035. The panel is slightly more bullish than their average predictions from our October 2025 survey over the next five years, when they projected ETH to reach $10,980 by 2030, but has a more tepid view for ETH’s price by 2035 ($19,017).
Josh Fraser, cofounder of Origin Protocol, is one of two panel members who see ETH hitting $9,000 by the end of 2026.
A $9,000 ETH in 2026 and $40,000+ by 2035 is a reasonable outcome if Ethereum continues compounding as the settlement layer for global on-chain finance. As ETH absorbs value from fees, staking, rollups and real-world asset issuance, while supply stays structurally constrained through burns and staking, the market increasingly prices ETH less like a tech token and more like a productive, yield-bearing monetary asset.
Jeremy Britton, the founder and CFO of BostonTrading, also sees BTC hitting $9,000 in 2026, likening ETH to digital gold.
While BTC is “digital gold,” ETH is more akin to “digital oil.” We would have liked to think that EVs capped the wells, but it’s unlikely to happen this century. The “ETH-killers” such as Polygon (MATIC) and Solana (SOL) are great alternatives, but they have an almost insurmountable job to leapfrog ETH’s longevity, utility, network effect and Lindy effect.
Mitesh Shah, the founder and CEO of Quaerite, Inc., offers a prediction ($5,000) more in line with the panel average and says while he’s bullish on ETH in 2026, ETH suffers from “middle-child syndrome.”
ETH is seemingly suffering from “middle-child syndrome” since it lacks Bitcoin’s clarity and Solana’s speed. With that said, I am bullish due to the 2026 Glamsterdam upgrade, resolving the L1 bottleneck and the market underestimating the supply shock from institutional ETFs (exchange-traded funds).
While Miles Paschini, CEO at FV Bank, offers a prediction of $3,600, which is well below the panel average, Paschini’s prediction is above ETH’s current trading price, and he does see ETH as a leader in the space.
ETH is still the leader in on-chain compute, and with upgrades stabilizing fees, more developers will go with the scale and security over just fees and speed.
Alexander Kuptsikevich, chief market analyst at FxPro, provides the panel’s lowest prediction for the year at $2,000 and sees the market entering “bear mode.”
I think the market has switched into “bear mode” and is now heading toward the Golden Support, i.e., the previous major peak. I see one that on a January 2018.
Our panelists predict that ETH’s average peak price in 2026 will be $5,891, with some predicting it will climb as high as $12,000.
Around a fifth (21%) of our panelists feel that ETH’s price will be in the $3,000 to $3,999 range at its highest before the close of 2026, with another fifth (21%) either say ETH’s price will pop at a range of either $4,000 to $4,999 or $6,000 to $6,999.
Ryan Lee, chief analyst at Bitget Research, sees ETH peaking at $7,000 in 2026, gaining robust support from the maturation of Real World Assets (RWAs). Additionally, he says:
ETH’s upward trajectory will accelerate with mass adoption, where widespread user engagement and institutional inflows amplify network effects, potentially unlocking exponential growth and solidifying Ethereum’s position as a cornerstone of decentralized finance and technology innovation.
The lowest price our panelists predict that ETH will hit in 2026 is $2,310 on average, with some individual panelists forecasting it will fall as low as $1,200.
Around two-fifths of the panel (41%) either think ETH’s price bottom for the remainder of the year is somewhere between $2,000 and $2,499 or $2,500 and $2,999 in 2026.
Nicole DeCicco, the CEO of CryptoConsultz, provides a minimum prediction of just $1,800 but sees the retreat in its price as temporary and influenced by macro conditions.
Ethereum remains the backbone of smart contract development, DeFi and on-chain innovation. The temporary pullback in ETH’s price is largely due to macroeconomic drag and liquidity rotation into Bitcoin, but the underlying fundamentals are strengthening. Institutional access through staking ETFs adds a new dimension of capital inflow, while the roadmap toward scalability is finally delivering measurable improvements. ETH is reclaiming its role as the center of on-chain activity, with demand and usage picking up again as these trends continue.
Ben Ritchie, managing director of Alpha Node Global, provides the lowest bottom prediction for 2026 at $1,200 but sees ETH as currently being undervalued.
The current price still reflects a market that is underestimating how embedded Ethereum has become in the digital asset stack, particularly as activity continues to migrate on-chain in a more regulated, institutional context.
While ETH is trading above the lows of April 2025, it is currently hovering just a touch over the $2,000 mark, which is probably why close to half 45% of the panel say it’s time to buy ether, with 45% saying it’s a hold and just 10% believing it’s a good time to sell.
Shubham Munde, senior research analyst at the Market Research Future, sees ETH’s current low as a buying opportunity:
Several institutions and analysts are beginning to view and manage staked ETH as an income-generating asset, and technological maturity is likely to drive prices.
Ruadhan O, the founder of Seasonal Tokens, is also in the buy camp, saying that, “Ethereum provides the base technology on which all of this new infrastructure will be built.”
Bitcoin is just one asset. Ethereum encompasses everything else that’s included under the broad classification of digital assets — stablecoins, DeFi, tokenization of real-world assets and smart contracts in general. Institutions don’t want to merely hold assets. They want to build solutions and offer new products and services.
Joseph Raczynski, a futurist at JT Consulting & Media, says that ETH is a hold, measuring his response and citing ETH’s competitors as a possible issue in the future.
Ethereum is generally leading the race for the future backbone of finance and Agentic AI, but Solana and others still linger. The primary pressure point for ETH is its need to increase transactions per second, while remaining decentralized. It’s no easy task, but the developers are moving in this direction.
Arthur Azizov, the CEO of B2BINPAY, is also in the hold camp:
On the ETH-specific side, the key inputs are the pace of scaling progress, fee dynamics, staking participation and whether institutional access keeps expanding through regulated products.
While John Hawkins, Head of the Canberra School of Government at the University of Canberra, says it’s time to sell.
Ether is still a speculative bubble as it has never achieved the initial goal of being a widespread payments mechanism. Even if electronic assets such as stablecoins, CBDCs (central bank digital currencies) or tokenized assets have a future, it does not mean that ETH has any fundamental value.
Well over half the panel (65%) say that ether is currently underpriced, with the remaining panel members either saying it’s fairly priced (20%) or overpriced (15%).
Sathvik Vishwanath, the CEO of Unocoin Technologies, also provides an above-average prediction at $7,800 and sees ETH as currently undervalued, as it’s still being priced as a “tech upgrade story.”
My ETH outlook is driven by utility-based valuation rather than scarcity alone: Ethereum is the settlement layer for on-chain finance. Ethereum is transitioning from a “tech upgrade story” to a cash-flow-driven digital infrastructure asset, and its price still reflects the former more than the latter.
Daniel Keller, the CEO of InFlux Technologies, also sees ETH as being undervalued:
Ethereum still maintains high volume, and the chain is starting to shift its infrastructure to address ongoing issues that have plagued developers: low gas limits, high gas fees, network congestion. With a focus on enabling more fluid deployment across the ecosystem, Ethereum is undervalued currently, especially with BTC dominance waning.
Ruslan Lienkha, the chief of markets at YouHodler, says that ETH is underpriced and will remain the leader in the space for years to come:
Ethereum is still the most widely used platform for Layer 2 projects. In my view, it will likely remain the leader in the coming years, especially as asset tokenization is just starting and most of that activity is expected to take place on Ethereum.
Desmond Marshall, the managing director of Rouge International & Rouge Ventures, believes that ETH is priced fairly but does see it losing relevance in the future.
More new upgrades mean it’s less valuable as a speculative token (i.e., stabilizing to its market value as a utility), and the more utility it becomes, only blockchain apps will use it. This means there are LOTS of new utility tokens that are newer, cheaper and cleaner coming out to take its utility place. Once it loses more speculative pricing, ETH will simply be replaced by others like BNB, XRP, SOL or even newcomers like CON.
Ruadhan O
Ruadhan O
Shubham Munde
Shubham Munde
John Hawkins
John Hawkins
Arthur Azizov
Arthur Azizov
Mitesh Shah
Mitesh Shah
Desmond Marshall
Desmond Marshall
Ruslan Lienkha
Ruslan Lienkha
Ben Ritchie
Ben Ritchie
Miles Paschini
Miles Paschini
Nicole DeCicco
Nicole DeCicco
Jeremy Britton
Jeremy Britton
Alexander Kuptsikevich
Alexander Kuptsikevich
Daniel Keller
Daniel Keller
Joseph Raczynski
Joseph Raczynski
Sathvik Vishwanath
Sathvik Vishwanath
Josh Fraser
Josh Fraser
Johnny Gabriele
Johnny Gabriele
Jeremy Eng-Tuck Cheah
Jeremy Eng-Tuck Cheah
Lee Smales
Lee Smales
Simon Peters
Simon Peters