Earlier this month, Aragon co-founder Luis Cuende revealed that he sees the price of Ethereum, which remains at around $261, hitting $1,000 in the long run.

In an interview with Sindre Hopland, the media producer at Itnig, Cuende explained that the Ethereum market along with the ICO industry is growing at an exponential rate. Both large-scale and small companies are actively investing in the efficiency of Ethereum network in automating operations with the utilization of smart contracts.

Aragon, which in essence is similar to EOS, the company that completed the largest ICO to date at $185 mln, is attempting to provide an infrastructure in which businesses can utilize Ethereum and smart contracts to lower expenses and costs of operations.

Cuende led the company to raise more than $28 mln in its initial coin offering (ICO) for ANT tokens, which was endorsed by early-stage venture capital firm focused on Bitcoin, Blockchain and virtual reality, established by billionaire investor Tim Draper’s son Adam Draper.

Ethereum price hitting $1,000

During the interview, Cuende revealed his bold prediction for Ethereum price and explained that he sees Ethereum’s native token Ether hitting $1,000 in the long run.

“I thought it was expensive one year ago when it was at 13 dollars, but today when I see the possibilities created by the technology, I think it's cheap. I believe Ethereum will be worth $1,000 in a couple of years,” said Cuende.

However, Cuende was also quick to admit that the cryptocurrency sector along with the Ethereum industry, are yet to offer viable products and fulfill their promises to establish a global decentralized ecosystem of applications.

Cuende noted:

“Crypto hasn’t achieved its promises just yet. When it achieves 10 percent of what it promised to do, I can't even imagine how crazy that will be.”

Many analysts in the past including Coinbase co-founder Fred Ehrsam have repeatedly informed the community in various blog posts and informative writings that Ethereum is yet to scale to a large-scale network for applications.

The vast majority of ICOs are still in their pre-alpha testing phase, including some of the largest ICOs in the history of the cryptocurrency industry including Bancor and EOS.

Hence, Cuende emphasized the importance and the necessity of ICOs to prove their value to their worthy investors and early-stage ICO participators.

Viable for mainstream adoption?

Over the past year, major economies and countries including the US, China, Japan, South Korea, Australia and the Philippines have fully legalized and regulated the Bitcoin industry and market, with India, the world’s third-largest economy, expected to follow the trend.

Chinese financial regulators from the People’s Bank of China emphasized in the past that Ethereum is going in the right direction, with the establishment of Enterprise Ethereum Alliance, which is encouraging and guiding multi-billion conglomerates including JPMorgan Chase, Microsoft and BHP Billiton to launch applications on top of the Ethereum network.

If the Ethereum network can scale efficiently with tens of millions of users deploying actively utilized smart contract-based applications, as Cuende emphasized, Ethereum has the potential of hitting $1,000, as does Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.