Ethereum’s Quiet Revenge: Arthur Hayes Doubles Down on ETH as Skeptics Eat Crow
While Wall Street still clutches its pearls over crypto volatility, BitMEX founder Arthur Hayes just placed a massive bet on Ethereum’s comeback. The smart contract pioneer—written off by TradFi pundits after the Merge—is showing unexpected resilience as layer-2 adoption explodes.
Hayes’ move comes as institutional inflows quietly return to ETH products, suggesting the ’flippening’ narrative might not be as dead as Goldman Sachs research reports claim. Meanwhile, SEC Chair Gary Gensler still can’t decide if it’s a security or a commodity—classic regulatory theater.
One hedge fund manager quipped: ’They called it ’ultrasound money’ until the bear market. Now it’s just another altcoin... until the next cycle proves them wrong again.’
Ethereum price analysis
Ethereum’s technical indicators on the daily timeframe show mixed signals. Key momentum indicators, the Relative Strength Index (RSI) reads 65 and generates a sell signal as ETH slips under 70 or the “overbought” zone. Moving Average Convergence Divergence (MACD) flashes green histogram bars above the neutral line, signaling an underlying bullish momentum in Ether.
ETH is close to its resistance at $2,746, the 50% Fibonacci retracement of the decline from the December 2024 peak of $4,107 to the April 10 low of $1,385. The altcoin could find support at $2,226, the upper boundary of a Fair Value Gap (FVG) on the daily price chart.
The weekly price chart supports a bullish thesis for ETH. RSI is above 50 and MACD shows green histogram bars, signaling underlying positive momentum in the ethereum price trend.
Two key resistances for Ether to test on the weekly timeframe are $2,605 and $2,921, close to the psychologically important $3,000 level. The two resistances represent the upper/lower boundaries of FVGs on the weekly timeframe.
Ethereum could find support at $2,323 or $1,873 in the event of a correction.
ETH/USDT daily and weekly price charts
Arthur Hayes says Ethereum could beat Solana
In an interview with Fortune Crypto at Token2049 in Dubai, Hayes told the reporter that he thinks Ethereum has a better performance outlook than Solana. Hayes explains:
“...mostly because it’s very hated, everyone thinks Ethereum does nothing, they haven’t done anything correctly, but it still has the most TVL, it still has the most number of developers and it still is the most secure proof of stake blockchain. Yeah, the price hasn’t done that well from 2020 to the current moment.”
Hayes acknowledges that Solana’s price performance was better than Ethereum, as SOL rallied from $7 to $172. However, the BitMEX co-founder believes that Ethereum could outperform solana for the next 18 to 24 months of the bull run.
Ethereum core developer says ETH will ship more, attract institutions
Preston Van Loon, co-founder and Ethereum protocol developer at Prysmatic Labs, told FXStreet in an exclusive interview that after the most recent Pectra upgrade, Ethereum is aiming for a faster and more consistent upgrade schedule.
Preston says, “Ideally with two smaller forks each year. Pectra included a wide range of changes across the protocol, from validator improvements to account abstraction and rollup scalability. Moving forward, upgrades will likely be narrower in scope to allow for quicker shipping and easier testing. Developers are focused on accelerating Ethereum’s evolution while maintaining the network’s high stability.”
Commenting on Ethereum’s remarkable track record of zero downtime since the chain first went live, the ETH Core developer says maintaining that stability “remains a top priority.” The ETH community should expect no decline in performance as Ethereum evolves and the growing developer base and improved coordination between teams allow for more complex upgrades.
Stressing on how Ethereum will continue to gain relevance among institutional clients and investors, Preston told FXStreet:
“Ethereum’s role in real world asset tokenization is only growing, but there are challenges ahead. As institutional adoption increases, scalability and user experience at the L2 level will become even more critical. While Pectra’s expansion of blob capacity improves throughput, fragmentation across rollups and the complexity of the broader ecosystem could slow down mainstream adoption if not addressed. Improving interoperability between L2s and enhancing developer tooling will be key to keeping Ethereum the platform of choice for institutional use cases.”
Why Ethereum is at a turning point
Comparing Ethereum to Bitcoin, analysts at CryptoQuant said Ethereum may have seen the bottom as the ETH/BTC ratio hits its lowest level since January 2020. Since its lowest point, the ratio has rallied 38% in the second week of May and signals the beginning of a likely “altcoin season.”
An altcoin season is marked by the top 75% of tokens ranked in the top 50 assets by market cap outperforming Bitcoin in a period of 90 days.
Analysts predict a return of the altcoin season as historic lows in the ETH/BTC ratio have previously marked the onset of an alt season and preceded broader altcoin outperformance in 2017, 2018 and 2019.
ETH/BTC price chart | Source: CryptoQuant
Analysts note in their report that investors now favor the purchase of Ether through ETFs. ETF holdings ratio has climbed since April, supporting the growing Ethereum demand. Key catalysts like the ratio’s rally since its lowest point, the successful implementation of the Pectra upgrade and a more favorable macro environment are likely influencing Ether price.
Further, exchange inflow data supports Ethereum’s gains as selling pressure is relatively low compared to Bitcoin. Relative to the largest cryptocurrency, this could be a catalyst and push the altcoin higher, likely to re-test the $3,000 resistance and the 2024 peak above $4,100.
