Arthur Cheong, the founder and CEO of crypto-focused investment firm DeFiance Capital, predicts that the price of Ether could surge to $4,500 even before the official approval of the first spot Ether exchange-traded funds (ETFs). In a post on May 26, Cheong shared his prediction with his 167,000 followers. At the time of writing, Ether was trading at $3,903, showing a 2.57% increase in the previous 24 hours. If Cheong’s prediction proves to be correct, Ether’s price would experience a rally of over 15% to reach the $4,500 mark, as reported by CoinMarketCap.
This prediction comes in the wake of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) granting approval to the 19b-4 filings of eight spot Ether ETF issuers on May 23. Consequently, these ETFs will be listed and traded on their respective exchanges. The first batch of approved ETFs includes filings from prominent firms such as VanEck, BlackRock, Fidelity, Grayscale, Franklin Templeton, ARK 21Shares, Invesco Galaxy, and Bitwise.
While the approval of the 19b-4 filings is indeed a positive development from the U.S. securities regulator, ETF issuers still need to secure approval for their S-1 filings, a process that may take several months, according to Bloomberg ETF analyst James Seyffart. He mentioned this in a post on May 20. The recent positive developments related to spot Ether ETFs have contributed to a strong upward movement in Ether’s price.
A hypothetical rally to $4,500 appears plausible, especially with further positive developments. This rally would position Ether’s price at 8% below its all-time high of $4,891, which was reached on November 16, 2021. However, there are significant resistance levels at $4,000 and $4,100 for ETH. If the price surpasses $4,100, it would trigger the liquidation of over $500 million worth of cumulative leveraged short positions across all exchanges, according to data from CoinGlass.
The approval of ETFs could serve as Ether’s most influential price catalyst during the current bull cycle and potentially propel its price to $10,000, according to Andrey Stoychev, the head of prime brokerage at Nexo. Stoychev shared this perspective with Cointelegraph.