Foreign media report that BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes has once again expressed optimism about Ethereum and select DeFi tokens, setting year-end price targets: ETH at $10,000, Ethena’s ENA at $0.50, and Ether.fi’s ETHFI at $2.00. According to the prices mentioned, all three targets represent significant upside from current levels.
ETH targets $10,000
Reports showed that ETH dropped to around $2,357 on Thursday before rebounding to near $2,400. To reach Hayes’s $10,000 target, the price would need to rise more than 300%. The article notes that this assessment is quite aggressive, but not entirely outside the range of current market optimism.
Hayes has previously emphasized that Ethereum has the opportunity to become the core settlement layer for institutional capital. He has also stated that some competing Layer 1 networks may lose market attention in the future. This price assessment continues his existing perspective on Ethereum’s long-term role.
ENA and ETHFI are expected to have higher price increases.
In addition to ETH, Hayes also named two other DeFi tokens with higher volatility. The report noted that ENA was trading at approximately $0.15 at the time, with a target price of $0.50, implying a potential upside of about 230%. According to CoinGecko data, ENA still declined by approximately 6% over the past 24 hours, contrasting with Hayes’s optimistic outlook.
At the time, ETHFI was trading at approximately $0.56. A rise to $2 would represent a gain of about 250%. Unlike ENA, ETHFI rose approximately 4% on Thursday, indicating that the market has already begun to react to this target price.
The article also mentioned that Hayes set a higher target for ENA in January and stated that he had already allocated this token along with other DeFi assets. In comparison, this latest $0.50 estimate is more conservative than his previous outlook.
The core remains the assessment of U.S. dollar liquidity.
The report suggests that the true driving force behind this set of price targets is not the fundamental valuation of the project, but Hayes’s assessment of macroeconomic liquidity. He is currently focusing on the EUR/JPY exchange rate, expecting it to decline from around 185 to 140 or lower, with this move likely occurring before June 2027.
According to his logic, pressure on the European banking system and shifts in Japanese capital flows could compel the Federal Reserve to provide greater support to the U.S. Treasury financing market, thereby expanding dollar liquidity. Under this framework, crypto assets are likely to be among the first to react to the release of liquidity.
In other words, the price targets for ETH, ENA, and ETHFI essentially represent a bet on a more accommodative liquidity environment. If this macroeconomic premise does not materialize, these assets still have considerable distance to cover to reach the aforementioned targets.