Analysts at research and brokerage noted that price remains flat and without clear momentum, impacted by slower Bitcoin ETF flows after the ‘halving’ event and a successful ETF launch.
Even with the recent slowdown, Bernstein is still betting on Bitcoin price to hit $150,000 by 2025 thanks to strong ETF demand inflows.
Moreover, the firm views the current slowdown as a brief pause amid further integration of Bitcoin ETFs with private banking platforms and wealth advisors. The Bitcoin mining sector also continues to show health, with leading miners consolidating market share.
In the scaling economy, the world’s second largest cryptocurrency has trailed slightly behind Bitcoin with a 42% increase year-to-date. Regulatory hurdles continue to exist, with the looming SEC’s rejection of an Ethereum ETF due to concerns about the correlation between spot and futures markets, or the classification of Ethereum as a security.
However, Bernstein sees these obstacles as temporary setbacks and expects growth in Ethereum, especially in Layer 2 solutions like Arbitrum, Optimism, and Polygon.
Lido dominates the Ethereum staking economy, which Bernstein believes offers high-beta opportunities as the ecosystem expands. The yet-to-be launched Eigen layer is expected to further drive growth in this area and support the re-staking economy.
Meanwhile, emerges as a strong competitor to Ethereum, noted for its integrated single-layer design, low transaction costs, and fast processing capabilities. Its growing dominance in stablecoin transactions and integration with payment giants like Visa (NYSE:) and Shopify (NYSE:) reflects its potential in mainstream and cross-border payments.
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In its latest update, Bernstein also highlights the growing appeal of decentralized finance (DeFi) and the tokenization of real-world assets within its digital assets portfolio. The firm observes that investors are moving away from centralized exchanges because of all the regulatory attention and are leaning more towards decentralized or on-chain exchanges like , GMX, and Synthetix .
Moreover, the tokenization of real-world assets is gaining traction among institutional investors. Major financial entities such as BlackRock (NYSE:) and Templeton have launched tokenized money market funds, with assets exceeding $700 million. The total value of tokenized U.S. Treasuries hit roughly $1.3 billion on-chain. Chainlink’s data oracle and tokenization platform are considered essential for supporting this infrastructure, the research notes.
Additionally, Bernstein added Ronin Blockchain to its portfolio as a proxy for the crypto gaming sector. Ronin is the host of the popular game , which claims a monthly active user base of around 3 million.
Bernstein’s portfolio serves as a token index for investors seeking direct exposure to the crypto markets, suggesting a tripling of the total crypto market cap to $7.5 trillion over the next 18-24 months. For equity investors interested in crypto, Bernstein recommends stocks of Bitcoin miners and crypto trading platforms, including Riot Blockchain (NASDAQ:), CleanSpark (NASDAQ:), and Robinhood (NASDAQ:) Markets.
