of Ethereum Although networks are processing more trades than ever before, market sentiment remains relatively calm, with prediction market traders expressing more optimism about gold than the second-largest cryptocurrency.
According to data from CryptoQuant, Ethereum’s seven-day moving average of daily transactions hit an all-time high of 2,023,000 on January 4, indicating an increase in the number of users interacting with Ethereum. blockchain.
This surge is primarily being driven by “accelerating adoption of real-world asset tokenization in parallel with a broader market recovery that has fueled token transfer activity across the network,” said Ryan Lee, principal research analyst at BitGet. decryption.
Ethereum is one of the leading platforms for RWA adoption, reinforcing the network’s role as a core financial infrastructure rather than a pure speculation platform.
ETH price delay
Despite network activity heading toward record highs, Ethereum price movement has been lagging, with ETH currently trading at $3,240, up 2.2% in the past 24 hours and 8.9% over the past seven days, according to CoinGecko data.
According to Lee, this disconnect reflects the reality that Ethereum’s short-term pricing remains more sensitive to liquidity conditions and market sentiment than on-chain usage alone.
Recent data highlights this sentiment gap, with prediction market traders expressing more optimism about gold than the second largest cryptocurrency.
Gold is currently trading at around $4,460 and is owned by users of the prediction market Myriad. decryption Parent company Dastan believes gold is more likely to reach $5,000 than Ethereum in the short term.
However, investors seem much more confident in ETH’s short-term target of $4,000, with a 58% chance of Ethereum rising to $4,000 rather than falling to $2,500, up from 43% at the beginning of the year.
Lee framed the predictive data favoring gold as a short-term response to geopolitical and macroeconomic uncertainty, rather than a structural abandonment of crypto’s “digital gold” narrative.
Ethereum’s long-term investment case still holds its edge DeFi And tokenized assets are an area where gold does not have a functional equivalent, he noted.
Lee suggested that a key catalyst for rebalancing prices to fundamentals will be a sustained increase in on-chain ETH accumulation by long-term holders. He argued that as more ETH is absorbed for use within RWA and DeFi, effective supply will become tighter, supporting more sustained price appreciation and reinforcing Ethereum’s central role in digital asset innovation.

