Volatile Months Ahead for Ethereum & USD 1,711 Likely for Year-End, Says Crypto Industry Panel

cryptonews.com:

The price of Ethereum’s native token ETH could drop to a low of USD 675 – and rise to a high of USD 2,673 – before ending the year at USD 1,711, according to a panel of crypto industry professionals surveyed by comparison website Finder.com.

According to an average of the responses given by the panelists, ETH is facing five months of exceptional volatility, with both a 57% drop and 68% gain from the current price likely to happen, before the price ends the year at USD 1,711 – around 7% higher than the current price.

At the time of writing (14:25 UTC), ETH traded at USD 1,604. The token is up 4% in a day and nearly 54% in a week.

Many panelists pointed to the Merge – Ethereum’s transition from the proof-of-work (PoW) to the proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus mechanism – as critical for the asset’s price going forward.

Ben Ritchie, managing director of Digital Capital Management, said that,

“Since Ethereum’s correlation to bitcoin is still high, we can speculate that if Merge happens before the year-end, its price may decouple [from the rest of crypto]. However, the outside economic factor is vital, bringing hurdles to the short-term price action.”

A similar sentiment was shared by Kevin He, chief operating officer of fintech firm CloudTech Group.

“If Ethereum successfully completes the merger this year, we expect the price to rise because PoS and faster [transactions per second] lead to higher demand for ETH from miners, investors and Dapp users, and if the market woes are alleviated in the second half of the year, it is possible for ETH price to rise to the previous high or break the previous high due to the rising demand,” he said.

Others also concurred, with Joseph Raczynski, a technologist and futurist for Thomson Reuters, saying