Summary As Ether becomes institutionalized, I believe the BlackRock ETHA ETF to be the least risky way to own this asset. Driven by the tokenzation theme, I think Ether has some way up to go yet - we have a target price range of $42-49. A break below $28 would render our thesis bunk. DISCLAIMER: This note is intended for US recipients only and, in particular, is not directed at, nor intended to be relied upon by, any UK recipients. Nothing in this note is intended to be investment advice, nor should it be relied upon to make investment decisions. Please read our full disclaimer here . One More Push To The Summit! By Alex King, CEO, Cestrian Capital Research, Inc. Crypto has been good to me. Not because I was early, but because I was late. Not because I piled in before Big Money, but because I just followed Big Money around, which is my normal investment strategy. As an old person, I have seen countless native-crypto enterprises fail, from Mt. Gox onwards. And whilst Wall Street’s shortcomings are well documented, the likelihood of a total wipeout, custodians losing your shares, etc., is just that bit lower in TradFi than it is in DigitalFi. So for most of my investing history, I avoided the siren song of Bitcoin and all its lower-order brethren for fear of my hard-earned money turning to a pile of ashes and/or ending up in a thumb drive at the bottom of a municipal dump (I know I would be that guy if I used offline hardware wallets) and/or being stolen in a home invasion. Doesn’t mean I didn’t study and watch crypto, and by that I don't mean tuning in to the endless torrent of crypto-influencer garbage that is inflicted daily on the unsuspecting. No swarm of digital hornets for me. I mean watching the theory, use cases, and institutionalization of crypto. The now-this-might-get-interesting moment for me was when, in 2018 or 2019, I read Life After Google by George Gilder . Before this, the only use cases I could imagine with crypto (meaning Bitcoin, since everything else seemed like scams or hopium to me) were i. price manipulation for the benefit of holders and miners, ii. transborder value transfer for holders with no access to the SWIFT system, and iii. a store of value that, while more volatile than the U.S. dollar, was and is less volatile than many other currencies around the world, and also not in and of itself subject to capital controls. When I read the Gilder book, the phrase that kept nagging at me about Ethereum (for this is Gilder’s crypto focus in his tome, following meetings with Vitalik Buterin, a cofounder of the Ethereum blockchain system) was “smart contracts.” It took me a while to understand what that meant, but I figured it was important. Crypto, as you know, was not a protection against the supposed evils of fiat currency when the equity market swooned in 2022. Bitcoin and Ether dumped faster than a recent Nasdaq listee. For a time it looked like these things were just creations of the free-money boom that began in 2009. All the associated stocks - your Coinbase(s) and whatnot - were in freefall, and the SEC was building a big stockpile of howitzers with which to assault the crypto-industrial complex. Yikes. Then this happened: CNBC, 15 June 2023 ( cnbc.com ) That changed it all in my view, since what’s good enough for Mr. Fink is surely good enough for me. I started trading the BlackRock spot Bitcoin ETF, IBIT, once it launched. And it became very clear to me that whatever the SEC’s position at the time, Big Money—the biggest of Big Money, in fact—was at ease with working with Coinbase (COIN), which likely meant that it would work out fine for Mr. Armstrong and company. I had been winning with a small short position in COIN (nothing very meaningful, as I scare easily); I duly closed it to bank the gains as soon as I saw that headline. I continued to ignore all the cryptobabble on the news and on social, and instead continued to trade IBIT according to i. standard technical analysis - it trades just fine to standard securities pattern-recognition methods - and ii. the risk-on/risk-off quantitative signal systems we run here at Cestrian, some of which are crypto-focused. This has all worked out pretty well. I think Bitcoin has some upside from here, more than the bears think and less than the bulls yell at you. I’m holding IBIT for a little longer yet. Now, back to Ethereum and those smart contracts. Until Wall Street’s “a-ha!” moment as regards tokenization, I confess I thought this had proven to be a bust; and the price performance of Ether vs. Bitcoin agreed with me. But then along came two developments: firstly, the embrace of stablecoins within the GENIUS Act, and secondly, the coalescence around the Ethereum blockchain as the database of choice for tokenized asset holdings. The GENIUS Act is a wonderful piece of martial art; truly, it is using one’s opponent’s force to hurt the opponent. The energy in crypto is being used to support the dollar and support U.S. Treasuries, because the more crypto, the more stablecoins, and the more stablecoins, the more collateral, and that collateral comes in the form of none other than Uncle Sam’s finest paper. And just like that, the Old World has bear-hugged the new. Never bet against a Boomer. Ethereum as the database for tokenized assets has catalyzed an upward move in the price of Ether, and I think it has legs yet. To rehash, a tokenized asset is just a digital version of said asset. Could be a painting, a building, a classic car collection, or a share of AT&T. What was analog and offline can now be digital and online. You can choose your own reason as to why tokenization is being embraced by Wall Street. The folk-hero reason is “to democratize access to previously illiquid elite assets!” like private credit funds and so on. That could be true. Or, it could be that asset owners are seeking new pools of liquidity to keep the bid going. And it could be that the providers of the plumbing might welcome the lack of clarity in securities regulation as regards tokenization . Choose your own ending. Me, I always choose darkness as regards securities markets, so I’m going with “yippee, we get to sell unmovable chunks of private credit funds into 401(k)s, and best of all, they might not even be securities, yay!! ” But you could choose life and believe it’s to do with helping people. Don’t let my cynicism drag you down. Anyway, if you want to play on the Ethereum blockchain, and Wall Street really does, trust me - then you need some Ether on hand. Why? Because just like you used to have to pay Ma Bell in US Dollars to process your transactions on Tuxedo, now you have to pay the Ethereum people in Ether to process your transactions on their blockchain. In exchange for which, if you “stake” (deposit or lend) your Ether, you’ll be paid a yield. Not the elusive “Bitcoin Yield” that Mr. Saylor is wont to cite but actual yield, albeit paid to you in … more Ether. All of this is why Ether has been on the rise lately. And back to my original take about native crypto vs. Big Money Crypto, you won’t find me buying any of the native stuff. The recent liquidation meltdown in crypto exchanges only supports my resolve to not go near them. Here’s Ether vs. the S&P, the Nasdaq, and Bitcoin since the post-Liberation Day lows this year. Ether vs. Bitcoin vs. The Old People ( YCharts ) And here’s where I think Ether can get to before any major correction: Ether Potential Outlook (TradingView, Cestrian Capital Research, Inc) This chart assumes that Ether doesn’t break below $3500 - if it does, the next stop is the 200-day simple moving average at $3175, and if that gives way, only the Gates of Hades are a definite stop. But if $3500 holds, I think the 5-wave projection model, just standard Fibonacci extensions and retracements, gets Ether to somewhere between $5250-6250. And if that happens? I’m out of here. Because at that point probably the overall market is looking for a rest, and since I don’t much want to hold such a volatile asset on the way down, I’ll take my ball home and wait for support to be found. My choice of instrument in Ether is, it won’t surprise you to learn, the BlackRock ETF, ETHA. This is the biggest and most liquid Ether ETF of all , with the lowest fees of any at-scale Ether ETF. Using the same chart logic as for Ether itself, I think ETHA can hit $42-49 before a material correction; for those who like to use sell-stop-limit orders, I would suggest considering such a stop a little way below the Wave 4 low shown on this chart. Consider choosing a not-obvious number so your stop can’t be as easily hunted out as it otherwise might. ETHA Chart (TradingView, Cestrian Capital Research, Inc) Cestrian Capital Research, Inc - 17 October 2025.
