While short-term traders have flocked to faster and flashier blockchains, Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan believes the network’s fundamentals are quietly setting the stage for a major revival – one that could drive ETH’s price past $10,000 by 2030.
The Long Road Back
Ethereum’s past two years have tested investor patience. Competing chains like Solana have seized headlines with speed and lower costs, while Ethereum’s own activity – from NFT sales to DeFi volume – has struggled to regain its 2021 momentum. For many, the narrative has shifted: once seen as crypto’s beating heart, Ethereum is now portrayed as the old guard, outpaced and overvalued.
But Hougan rejects that view. To him, Ethereum’s slowdown isn’t a collapse – it’s a restructuring. Layer-2 networks have siphoned traffic off the main chain, reducing visible activity but massively improving scalability. “This is the foundation phase,” he has said in recent interviews, framing Ethereum’s lull as the calm before its next expansion cycle.
A Network That Prints Dollars
Hougan’s conviction comes from a simple observation: Ethereum runs the digital dollar economy.
While memecoins and AI tokens come and go, Ethereum remains the primary settlement layer for stablecoins – digital assets pegged to fiat currencies that underpin global crypto liquidity.
Nearly 53% of all stablecoins, worth over $307 billion, are issued on Ethereum according to data from DeFiLlama. That dominance gives the network something no rival can match: real-world utility in the form of money itself. “Every major payment innovation will route through stablecoins,” Hougan has argued, “and most of those stablecoins already live on Ethereum.”
Solana may process transactions faster, but Ethereum processes the ones that matter – the ones carrying the digital equivalents of dollars, euros, and yen.
Why the Market Misunderstands Ethereum
Part of Ethereum’s current perception problem, Hougan suggests, comes from visibility. The migration of user activity to Layer-2 scaling solutions makes the main chain look empty, even as overall transaction throughput grows across the ecosystem.
That optical illusion has led some analysts to dismiss ETH as “uninvestable.” Yet for long-term investors like Hougan, those off-chain expansions only reinforce Ethereum’s dominance: every Layer-2 still depends on Ethereum for security and final settlement.
A Decade of Compounding Growth
Hougan expects Ethereum’s market value to double by the end of the decade, projecting $5,000 by the end of 2025 and “well north of $10,000” by 2030 if current trends hold. His thesis relies not on hype cycles but on infrastructure – the idea that as tokenized assets, stablecoins, and decentralized finance become standard parts of the global economy, Ethereum will remain the platform powering their movement.
If that happens, the next bull run may look very different from the last one. Instead of trading driven by speculation, Ethereum’s growth could come from function – from being the blockchain that quietly runs the world’s financial plumbing.
Beyond Price Targets
Hougan’s forecast isn’t a bet on market mania; it’s a reflection of how deeply Ethereum has become embedded in the mechanics of digital finance. From stablecoin transfers to institutional tokenization pilots, Ethereum’s reach extends far beyond crypto trading.
If that trajectory holds, the next time ETH crosses $10,000, it won’t just signal another speculative high – it will mark the moment the network’s infrastructure truly became indispensable.