Ethereum makes a strong rebound. Will it迎来真正的爆发 in 2025?

Original Title: "Ethereum's rebound looks strong, but can it hold? The 2025 outlook"

Author: Ankish Jain

Compiled by: Baihua Blockchain

A fierce sell-off cleared the weak ETH positions in the market, followed by a significant rebound. With new tariffs, whale movements, and network upgrades underway, is Ethereum gearing up for a bull market in 2025?

1. Diplomatic Negotiations Trigger ETH Rebound

Ethereum (ETH) Price Trends In the past few days, Ethereum's price has experienced extreme volatility, dropping to $2,150 on February 3, marking the lowest level since September 2024. This decline was primarily influenced by the financial market's reaction to the new U.S. tariff policy that officially took effect on February 1.

Tariff Shock Hits the Market, Causing Uncertainty The U.S. government imposed a 25% tariff on imports from Canada and Mexico, and a 10% tariff on Chinese goods, quickly triggering global market unrest, with the crypto market not spared.

Diplomatic Interventions Stabilize Market Sentiment However, within hours, diplomatic efforts rapidly unfolded. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced on X (formerly Twitter) that he had spoken with Donald Trump and successfully negotiated a 30-day delay on tariffs to allow both countries to discuss a broader border security agreement. This news provided a brief respite for the market, and Ethereum's price stabilized and rebounded.

Mexico also adopted a similar response strategy, with President Claudia Sheinbaum confirming that the tariffs would be delayed for a month as part of border security discussions.

Market Sentiment Improves, ETH Price Recovers

Driven by these diplomatic developments, market sentiment improved. By February 4, the ETH price had rebounded to $2,700.

ETH Briefly Touched $2,900, Trump Family Weighs In

After Trump announced the suspension of tariffs on Canada and Mexico, the ETH price briefly touched $2,900. Almost simultaneously, Eric Trump posted on X, stating, "In my opinion, now is a good time to accumulate $ETH."

This statement further boosted positive market sentiment.

Trump Family's DeFi-Related Project Transfers Raise Market Attention

Eric Trump's comments coincided with World Liberty Financial (WLFI) making a large-scale fund transfer. This DeFi project is closely related to Donald Trump, Donald Trump Jr., and Eric Trump.

Data shows that WLFI transferred $3.0741 million worth of eight assets to Coinbase Prime for financial management. This move drew market attention and could further influence market sentiment for digital assets like Ethereum.

https://x.com/spotonchain/status/1886572108324725075?refsrc=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1886572108324725075%7Ctwgr%5Ef39d77470064a7d15d206e3daa158fa4b431af84%7Ctwcon%5Es1\&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fcrypto.news%2Fethereum-price-prediction-2025-2030-outlook%2F

2. WLFI Unstakes Lido and Makes Large ETH Purchases

Shortly after, World Liberty Financial (WLFI) unstaked 19,423 Lido staked Ethereum (stETH) and converted it to ETH. Subsequently, the project utilized $5 million USDC to purchase 1,826 ETH at a price of $2,738.

Currently, WLFI still holds $9.662 million in various assets across nine known wallets, indicating that the project is actively managing its crypto asset allocation.

At the same time as WLFI's operations, traditional financial giant Fidelity made a notable move—on February 4, the institution purchased $49.75 million worth of ETH.

This series of fund movements shows that Ethereum is not only rebounding strongly after market turbulence but also attracting firm buying from institutional investors, further boosting market confidence.

Despite institutional investment increases and price rebounds, Ethereum still fell 15% over the past week and is nearly 45% below its historical high of $4,890 (November 2021).

So, what exactly is happening in the Ethereum ecosystem? How will these changes affect ETH's future price trends? Let's delve deeper.

3. Ethereum Ecosystem Updates

Ethereum is undergoing critical adjustments to enhance scalability and optimize transaction efficiency.

Gas Limit Increase and Scalability Improvements

On February 3, Ethereum validators approved a proposal to increase the gas limit for the first time since the Merge, marking another step forward in network scalability.

Adjustment Details:

Gas limit increased from 30 million to 31 million, with potential further increases to 36 million in the future.

Unlike previous changes that required hard forks, this adjustment takes effect automatically once over 50% of validators express support.

The Importance of the Gas Mechanism: Gas represents the computational power required to execute transactions and smart contracts, with each operation consuming gas fees, and the gas limit determining the total computational capacity a single block can accommodate.

When transaction volume exceeds the limit, users must either wait for subsequent blocks or pay higher fees for priority processing.

Increasing the gas limit means that a single block can accommodate more transactions, improving network throughput and alleviating congestion.

Impacts and Challenges:

This helps complex DeFi applications, NFT platforms, and on-chain services to operate more smoothly.

However, the gas limit adjustment does not address the core issues—transaction costs and speed.

Ethereum processes 1 to 1.5 million transactions daily, while Solana handles 60 to 65 million, with far superior efficiency and lower transaction costs.

This indicates that Ethereum's long-term scalability challenges remain, and L2 solutions and protocol upgrades are still crucial.

With the increase in gas limits and upcoming upgrades, can Ethereum narrow the gap with its competitors and lay the foundation for the market in 2025? The future development of the network remains worthy of close attention.

4. Ethereum's Market Position and Competitive Challenges

To address scalability and competitive pressures, Ethereum plans to launch the Pectra upgrade in early 2025, which is expected to significantly enhance the scalability of L2 solutions.

1) Key Improvements of Pectra: Increase in Blob Targets

The Pectra upgrade will increase the blob targets from 3 to 6.

Blobs (large data packets) are mechanisms used by L2 solutions for temporarily storing transaction data, avoiding direct writes to the Ethereum main chain.

Increasing blob capacity can enhance the throughput of L2 networks, making transactions faster and cheaper.

2) Continued Expansion of Layer-2 Ecosystem

Currently, Arbitrum, Optimism, and zkSync have become important cornerstones for Ethereum's scalability:

Arbitrum is the L2 solution with the highest TVL, significantly reducing costs by batching Ethereum transactions and generating compressed proofs.

Optimism employs a similar approach but additionally introduces incentive mechanisms, using OP Tokens to encourage developers to build applications on its network, enhancing ecosystem vitality.

As the Pectra upgrade progresses, Ethereum's L2 ecosystem will welcome more efficient transaction processing capabilities, further strengthening its competitive edge in scalability. However, facing competition from efficient low-cost public chains like Solana, Ethereum's market position still relies on continuous optimization of the L2 ecosystem and reducing user costs.

After these upgrades are implemented, whether Ethereum can dominate the 2025 bull market remains to be seen.

3) zkSync: Zero-Knowledge Rollup Provides More Advanced Scalability Solutions

zkSync employs zero-knowledge rollup (zk-Rollup), offering more advanced scalability solutions that enable near-instant transactions while reducing fees.

While L2 solutions have played an important role in alleviating Ethereum's congestion issues, they also highlight the core differences between Ethereum and its competitors.

4) Ethereum vs. Competing Public Chains: Fundamental Differences in Scalability Approaches

Ethereum relies on Layer-2 solutions to enhance scalability, while public chains like Solana, Avalanche, and Sei natively support high throughput without the need for additional scaling layers.

Solana: Processes tens of thousands of transactions per second without L2, at extremely low costs.

Avalanche: Uses subnet mechanisms to enhance scalability and supports custom blockchain deployments.

Sei: An emerging high-performance chain focused on decentralized finance (DeFi) scenarios, boasting extremely fast transaction speeds.

In contrast, Ethereum still faces scalability challenges and needs to rely on L2 scaling, while competing public chains' underlying architectures already possess the capability to efficiently handle large volumes of transactions, putting Ethereum under greater competitive pressure in terms of scalability.

5) ETH/BTC Trends Under Pressure, Ethereum's Market Position Challenged

In addition to technical competition, Ethereum's market performance is also affected.

As of February 4, the ETH/BTC trading pair fell to 0.027, marking the lowest level since March 2021.

This ratio has dropped nearly 50% compared to a year ago, indicating that ETH is relatively weak compared to BTC, with market funds possibly leaning more towards Bitcoin or other competing public chains.

Facing challenges from technological upgrades and market position, Ethereum's future competitiveness depends not only on the development of the L2 ecosystem but also on continuously optimizing transaction costs and improving mainnet performance. Otherwise, it may further lose its advantage in the market competition in 2025.

6) Bitcoin Dominates Market Liquidity, Putting Pressure on Ethereum's Valuation

As Bitcoin continues to rise in market liquidity and investor attention, Ethereum's relative valuation remains under close observation.

7) Can Ethereum Steady Itself?

ETH fell to $2,150: Market Deleveraging Cleans Up Excessive Speculation Ethereum dropped to $2,150 on February 3, influenced not only by macroeconomic uncertainty but also as a market deleveraging adjustment that cleared excessive leveraged long positions.

Analyst @EmperorBTC pointed out, "There are a lot of low-quality ETH leveraged longs in the market, which were liquidated when the price hit the $2,100 area."

Data shows that Ethereum's open interest decreased by $4 billion in a short period, which helped stabilize the market to some extent.

Related Tweet: https://x.com/EmperorBTC/status/1886484757627744742

After Deleveraging, Spot Demand Drives ETH Rebound

After the clearing of leverage, Ethereum rebounded from $2,150 to $2,700, primarily driven by spot demand rather than leveraged pushes, indicating a healthier market foundation.

The support from spot buying means that market sentiment has somewhat recovered, laying a more solid foundation for ETH's future price trends.

5. Technical Analysis: Ethereum Tests Key Support Levels

ETH briefly fell below the 200-week moving average (200 WMA), a technical indicator that has long been an important support area.

Another trader noted that ETH touched the 0.618 Fibonacci retracement level, which is typically a key support level at market cycle bottoms.

"ETH may have delivered the best 'gift' of 2025, breaking below the 200 WMA and testing the 0.618 Fibonacci retracement in the early morning."

This technical pattern suggests that ETH may have entered a phase of bottoming out, and if market demand continues to rise, prices may rebound further.

However, ETH still needs to prove its competitiveness against BTC while relying on the Pectra upgrade and the advancement of the L2 ecosystem to enhance its market position.

1) ETH Price Recovers to 200 WMA, but Macroeconomic Environment Remains Risky

Although ETH price has regained the 200-week moving average (200 WMA), historical data shows that Ethereum experienced strong rebounds after testing this support level in August and September 2024.

However, the macroeconomic environment remains filled with uncertainty:

The trigger for the market crash—the escalation of U.S. tariffs—has caused ripples in global financial markets.

Diplomatic negotiations have temporarily alleviated market pressure, but potential retaliatory measures or further economic restrictions may still pose risks to market sentiment.

If global liquidity tightens or market risk appetite declines, Ethereum's recovery momentum may face challenges.

2) ETH/BTC Trends: Market Funds Leaning Towards Bitcoin?

The continuous decline of ETH/BTC indicates that market funds prefer Bitcoin, especially as institutional investor inflows are significantly skewed towards BTC.

The Pectra upgrade and gas limit increase for Ethereum may drive ecosystem growth, but whether these improvements can genuinely benefit users and developers will determine ETH's long-term demand.

6. Ethereum Price Prediction: Will the Downtrend Reverse?

This market adjustment has cleared billions of dollars in leveraged positions, placing ETH in a healthier market environment, but future price trends remain influenced by multiple factors: scalability upgrades (Pectra, L2 development) market adoption (DeFi, NFT ecosystem growth) competitive landscape (challenges from Solana, Avalanche, etc.) macroeconomic environment (interest rates, liquidity changes)

1) Ethereum Price Prediction for 2025

DigitalCoinPrice predicts: ETH average price $5,510, highest $6,037 🔹 Changelly is more optimistic: ETH average $6,124, highest $7,194

DeAgentAI co-founder Joe believes that Ethereum's current price trends align with historical patterns, and short-term bearish signals (like the February 3 drop below the 200 WMA) often require more detailed interpretation.

He points out that historical trends in 2023 and 2024 show that near key support levels, ETH may experience sharp reversals, so traders should pay attention to ETH's response to key support as an important signal for future trends.

Can Ethereum Welcome the 2025 Bull Market?

ETH is currently in a corrective rebound phase, and if the Pectra upgrade is successfully implemented along with the continuous expansion of the L2 ecosystem, Ethereum is expected to regain market attention and reverse the market share gap with Bitcoin. However, if macroeconomic turmoil persists or competing public chains further erode Ethereum's market share, ETH's gains may be limited.

2) Ethereum Price Prediction for 2027

If Ethereum continues to dominate the smart contract space and its scalability solutions mature, ETH may see an increase in 2027.

DigitalCoinPrice predicts: ETH average price $9,580, highest $10,098.

Changelly predicts: ETH average $12,316, highest $14,527.

At the same time, growth in the DeFi ecosystem, innovations in the NFT space, and Ethereum's role in the tokenization of real-world assets (RWA) may bring new demand for ETH.

However, if risk assets face tightening conditions, ETH prices may encounter resistance, even if the fundamentals improve.

3) Ethereum Price Prediction for 2030

Long-term predictions indicate that Ethereum may reach price levels previously thought unimaginable.

DigitalCoinPrice predicts: ETH average price $14,829, highest $15,108.

Changelly predicts: ETH average $40,055, highest $47,066.

However, long-term predictions always come with risks. Ethereum faces competition from Solana, Avalanche, and emerging blockchain networks that aim to provide lower fees and higher transaction speeds.

Although ETH prediction models remain optimistic, it is crucial to combine technical forecasts with real-world adoption trends before making long-term investment decisions. Therefore, investments should be made cautiously, and one should not invest more than they can afford to lose.