In 2014, when then 20-year old Vitalik Buterin released the Ethereum blockchain, the crypto space was already rapidly filling up with different cryptocurrencies. Granted, most of them were mere Bitcoin spoofs but the market was slowly taking shape. Most developers seemed keen on improving on the perceived flaws in the Bitcoin protocol without offering much in the way of diversity. The ideas seemed to be the same, design a trustless payment processing cryptocurrency. The introduction of Ethereum changed all of that as the power of the blockchain was increased by several orders of magnitude. Where blockchain was hitherto confined to the payment processing arena, developers were now wiser to the fact that it could offer a lot more.

From that time onwards, Ethereum has continued to grow considerably. To the casual observer, its achievements may seem small in comparison to the record-breaking Bitcoin. However, crypto enthusiasts and financial monitors know just how far the Ethereum cryptocurrency has come in such a short space of time. Ethereum has for the most parts maintained a hold on the number two position behind Bitcoin in terms of market cap. It is regarded as the most valuable Altcoin and is the basis for a great majority of the advancements in the crypto space. The focus of this article is to look at a few Ethereum price trend predictions for 2018.

· The $1,000 Benchmark

For all the many gains that Ethereum has enjoyed over the years, there is one benchmark that it wasn’t able to attain until 2018. That benchmark was reaching the $1,000 market price milestone. Ethereum had a stellar year in 2017. It seemed for all intents and purposes that it had shaken off the turmoil of the DAO hack that occurred the previous years. In fact, many an expert had sounded the death knell for Ethereum. In the aftermath of the hack and all the conflicts within the network, the inevitable schism occurred. But unlike ancient Rome, the burgeoning empire though wobbling a bit managed to get back on its feet and brave the storm.

By 2017, things began to take a different turn as ICOs became the new rage. Developers were racing to the market to sell tokens to the public in exchange for funding. The greater majority of these projects were hosted on the Ethereum network. In fact, the DAO used to be the poster ICO that all other projects looked up to. In 2017, there were multiple record-setting ICOs that raked in upwards of $100 Million. The native currencies of these projects were mostly ERC20 compliant. Ether was being used as ‘gas’ in significantly more transactions than in any other year prior. Slowly but surely, the price of Ethereum began to rise. Not only did its price rise, but its market cap also grew significantly, contributing to the decline in Bitcoin market share at certain points in the year.

By December 31, 2017, the price of Ethereum stood at just over $720 with a market cap of almost $70 Billion. Ethereum had grown by a massive 3,000 percent in one calendar year and by 180 percent within the month of December alone. Again, casual observers might not have noticed this seeing as Bitcoin was stealing most of the headlines. The Ether grew in value by 3,000 percent, yet the $1,000 mark was yet to be attained. Such was the effect of the DAO hack, the hard fork and sundry issues with the network that even with all that growth, it was yet to scale the $1,000 boundary.

ICOs cooled down towards the end of the year, yet the Ether was beginning to rise in price. It faced stiff competition in terms of market share from Ripple but it has as at the time of writing this article, been on a 9 day straight ascendency that has seen it establish itself as the number 2 cryptocurrency. It is only early days in 2018 but Ethereum has already scaled the $1,000 mark. It is currently trading at about $1,300 with a market cap of just under $130 Billion. The Ether will most likely stay above $1,000 and possibly double or even triple in price.

· Bullish Growth in both price and market cap

The Ether (the native currency of the Ethereum network) is on the march in the upward price and market cap trajectory. It is as much a carryover of the way it ended the year in strong fashion. Bitcoin dominance is at an all-time low of just under 40 percent. This is due in no small measure to the meteoric rise of the Ethereum cryptocurrency. According to CoinMarketCap, the market capitalization of Ethereum which is currently at $129 Billion is greater than half of Bitcoin which stands at $245 Billion. To get an idea of how big a deal this is, for a long time, Bitcoin used to have a greater than 50 percent dominance of the market. This means that Bitcoin’s market share was greater than all other coins put together. Now, Ethereum is past the halfway point of Bitcoin’s market share.

Many ICOs were launched in 2017, some of these tokens are now being listed on many crypto exchange services. Any appreciable growth in these tokens reflects positively on both the price and the market cap of Ethereum. EOS, the highest grossing ICO to date is listed as the 13th most valuable cryptocurrency with a market cap of $6 Billion and a price of $11. As the stock of EOS and all other Ethereum-based cryptos begin to rise, it is sure to have a positive effect on Ethereum. As a consequence, Ethereum could very well even hit $5,000. On the basis of the sheer volume of projects that are running on its blockchain and the solutions these projects provide across the entire business process, the growth of Ethereum seems limitless.

A few words of Caution

The fact that so many active projects run on the Ethereum network is both an advantage and a disadvantage. As the number of users on the network begins to expand, the quintessential blockchain conundrum of scalability becomes an issue. Unless Ethereum is able to come up with a creative way around this issue then it will most likely suffer the inevitable resolution of all scalability related conflicts — hard forks.

The emergence of so many ICOs has created a speculative bubble around many tokens that directly contribute to the value of the Ether. The prices of many of these tokens seem to have been grossly overvalued. When these tokens begin to be subject to market forces, the true nature of their worth will become more apparent. While Ethereum seems to be rising in the midst of this inflated crypto-bubble, it wouldn’t be surprising to see it fall if a number of key ICOs fail.