10x Research Research Director Markus Thielen recently stated in a market report: "While we cannot rule out the possibility of new catalysts emerging, we would not be surprised if Ethereum struggles to achieve a meaningful rebound in 2025. While we understand Ethereum's volatility, we believe it remains a poor medium-term investment and expect ETH's performance in 2025 to again lag behind BTC. Therefore, our stance on Ethereum is still very clear: 'avoid.'"
Thielen noted that one of the key indicators to watch in 2025 will be the trend of active validators. However, he pointed out that Ethereum validators' 1-month growth rate has turned negative, dropping about 1% in the last 30 days, raising concerns about the increased risk of more validators exiting the network. Thielen stated that the increase in unstaking seems 'logical,' as he believes there is a lack of 'real demand' outside of staking for Ethereum.
He also mentioned that last March's Ethereum Duncan upgrade (which reduced network gas fees and allowed it to handle more transactions) was 'six months late,' missing the peak of the meme coin surge and causing the market to 'turn towards' more 'cost-effective' alternatives like Solana. He is also skeptical about the Pectra upgrade scheduled for early 2025, stating, 'Of the 19 upgrades to date, only two have had a significant positive impact on ETH prices, and these upgrades occurred during Bitcoin bull markets.'
He added, 'The three major catalysts for Ethereum in 2024 have fundamentally failed, overall bringing little value.'

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