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.
According to CoinMarketCap, Ether (ETH) closed at around $2,980 on December 31, down about 13.7% from where it began trading at the beginning of the year.
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 doubted that Ether (ETH) would 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.
“Yes, ETH is up 50% since we placed the bet. I needed a clean 8x 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 that will serve as the central infrastructure for a freer and more open internet.”
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