Arthur Hayes, the former CEO of BitMEX, told an interviewer at KBW 2026 in Seoul that he expects to see Ethereum reach $10,000 by the end of the year.
That’s more than three times the current price, near $2,700, with ETH still trading around 46% below its all-time high.
The $10,000 case for Ethereum
In a CoinDesk clip posted to X during the KBW2026 event, Hayes gave a direct response when asked for his Ethereum price prediction:
“$10,000 by the end of the year.”
He added that he likes ETH because he can invest a large amount of money in it without expecting a sudden 75% loss from an exploit. Hayes also explained why Ethereum lagged behind other networks at different points in the cycle, putting it all down to narratives. He pointed out that Solana captured the coin narrative and was growing rapidly, while Ethereum had become slower as competing blockchains took some of the business.
“Obviously Ethereum pioneered this whole decentralized computing thing and then fell victim to its own success, slowness, etc.,” he said. “And there were other challengers who took over.”
Nonetheless, he argued that Ethereum remains the most secure layer because it has the largest market capitalization.
Hayes’ own ETH trades haven’t always been timely. In August, he sold 2,365 ETH at around $1,821, a loss of $241,000, after buying 7,213 ETH at an average of $1,923. And it wasn’t the first time. In July, he sold 5,900 units for almost $10 million after purchasing them days earlier for $10.58 million, resulting in a loss of more than $600,000.
At the time of writing, the cryptocurrency was down 1% over 24 hours and almost 3% over the past seven days, but it was still up over 11% over two weeks and 9% higher than a month ago.
The investor’s $10,000 prediction requires ETH to gain around 3.7 times its current price, and this gap is notable as the token is still around 46% below its all-time high of $4,946.
ETF Flows Keep Ethereum in Focus
Ethereum’s quarterly high looks different from its short-term pullback. Data from Coinglass shows that it gained just under 70% in the third quarter of 2026 after falling 29.26% in the first quarter and 25.28% in the second quarter.
Meanwhile, spot ETF activity added another source of buying, with Ethereum ETFs seeing $892 million in net inflows in September, with just one trading day remaining in the month.
However, the streak of daily inflows that began on September 18 ended yesterday with an outflow of $2.8 million, while the previous week generated $689.9 million in net inflows. This activity brought cumulative inflows to $13.95 billion.
The post Arthur Hayes Predicts Ethereum to Hit $10,000 by Year-End appeared first on CryptoPotato.
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