ETH achieved major milestones in 2021 including capturing US$10 billion in transaction fees from the network. ETH also surpassed Stripe into second position in global transactions by dollar value in 2021. In 2021, the network underwent an upgrade called “London EIP-1559” which changed the way ETH fees worked and which has brought up issues of supply issuance. As it stands, crypto “whales” hold 43.7 percent of ETH, but it could become more attractive to them should a restricted supply issuance be ongoing.
Ark Invest is bullish on ETH and has high hopes for the platform, saying that it stands to benefit greatly from the rise in DeFi (decentralised finance) and NFTs (non-fungible tokens) given that it serves as the main ecosystem for both sectors. Since ETH is the “preferred collateral” in DeFi, Ark Invest believes that the platform could reach a market cap of US$20 trillion in the next 10 years, suggesting a price of roughly US$180,000.
The Big Ideas Report noted that:
“According to our research, Ethereum could displace many traditional financial services, and its native token, ether, could compete as global money. As financial services move on-chain, decentralised networks are likely to take share from existing financial intermediaries.”
It added:
“The beneficiaries of this shift include Ethereum, the base protocol, and DeFi, the decentralised applications built on top of Ethereum. As the preferred collateral in DeFi and the unit of account in NFT marketplaces, ether (ETH) has the potential to capture a portion of the US$123 trillion in global M2.”