Cryptocurrency executive Kane Warwick plans to pay $50,000 to bet that Ether will hit $25,000 in 2025, joining many market participants who overestimated the speed of Ether’s recovery after October’s crash.
ether (Ethereum) closed December 31 at around $2,980, about 13.7% lower than its opening price at the beginning of the year, according to CoinMarketCap.
Part of that was due to the $19 billion crypto market liquidation that took place on October 10th, which triggered a downtrend that saw Ether drop to $2,767 before slowly rising again.
The bet grew out of an exchange between Warwick and Multicoin managing partner Kyle Samani in November. Samani is ether (Ethereum) could recover and reach $25,000 by the end of the year.
Warwick disagreed and bet he had a chance at odds of 10:1.
“It’s time to pay up,” Samani said in an X post to Warwick on Wednesday.
Ethereum has fallen 2.18% in the past 30 days. sauce: coin market cap
warwick, Like many other companies, we had high hopes for Ether last year given the surge in adoption by institutional investors and the move towards real-world asset tokenization.
Speaking to Cointelegraph on Friday, Warrick toned down his new Ether price target for 2026 to “just $10,000” in light of recent losses.
“Oh, really (actually) Ethereum 50% more than when we placed the bet. I needed another clean eight to win,” Warwick said.
Other analysts had expected about $10,000.
Weeks before Warwick doubled down on Ether, Bitmine Chairman Tom Lee speculated that the cryptocurrency would end the year at around $10,000.
“For Ethereum, it would be somewhere between ($10,000) and $12,000,” Lee said on the October 13 Bankless podcast.
Meanwhile, BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes, who also appeared on the podcast episode, said he is “going to stay consistent” with his prediction of $10,000 by the end of the year.
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The price didn’t reach that far, but instead Ethereum achieved other milestones in 2025.
Ethereum underwent two major upgrades in 2025: Pectra in May and Fusaka in December. The Ethereum Foundation said Fusaka has brought Ethereum one step closer to offering “near-instant transactions.”
On Thursday, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said Ethereum needs to do more to achieve its mission of “building the world’s computer to serve as the central infrastructure for a freer and more open internet.”
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