A recent in-depth analysis titled The Bull Case for ETH suggests that Ethereum (ETH) could potentially reach a staggering fully diluted market capitalization of around $85 trillion. This projection translates to a long-term price estimate of approximately $706,000 per coin. The research, dated June 2025 and authored by a team of twenty-one contributors—including notable figures like core researcher Danny Ryan and Bankless co-founder Ryan Sean Adams—positions ETH as a valuable digital asset likened to “digital oil,” serving as both a yield-generating and deflationary reserve asset that empowers the burgeoning on-chain economy.

The report opens with the assertion that the global financial landscape is “on the brink of a historic transformation,” emphasizing the digitalization of assets and the transition to an on-chain system. The authors contend that Ethereum stands out as the foundational platform in this shift, owing to its robust developer ecosystem, unmatched reliability, and consistent uptime.

Despite this promising outlook, the document notes that ETH remains one of the most significantly undervalued assets in global markets. Even after multiple technological advancements and its expanding role in tokenized assets and stable-coin settlements, ETH continues to trade well below its 2021 peak.

The report boldly claims, “ETH represents the next major asymmetrical investment opportunity, destined to become a central component of institutional digital-asset portfolios.” It argues that ETH serves not only as fuel and collateral but also as a reserve asset, pivotal for the internet’s evolving financial architecture.

Comparing Ethereum to Established Value Stores

To support their valuation claim, the research juxtaposes Ethereum against four established stores of value: crude oil reserves (approximately $85 trillion), gold (around $22 trillion), the global bond market (approximately $141 trillion), and the worldwide M2 money supply (roughly $93 trillion). When averaging these benchmarks, the study arrives at an indicative long-term potential valuation for ETH of around $85 trillion, or approximately $706,000 per coin.

The authors clarify that this figure does not signify a specific price target within a defined timeframe, but rather an equilibrium state should Ethereum gain traction as a multifaceted asset—functioning as an energy commodity, a monetary metal, sovereign collateral, and a foundational currency for the digital economy.

A critical component of this thesis is Ethereum’s unique monetary framework. The annual gross issuance is capped at 1.51 percent, while about 80 percent of transaction fees are effectively burned, leading to a reduction in net issuance as on-chain activities increase.

Since the transition to proof-of-stake in September 2022, the supply growth rate has been nearly 0.09 percent, which is less than both fiat currencies and Bitcoin. The authors describe this scenario as “predictable scarcity,” particularly in contrast to Bitcoin’s hard cap, which they suggest may ultimately affect miner incentives and the overall security model of the network.

Moreover, the concept of staking yield plays a pivotal role: validators are rewarded not only with base issuance but also a share of transactional fees for maintaining the network’s security. This renders staked ETH a “productive, yield-generating digital asset,” which is likened to earnings from gold leasing or oil reserves but with the added advantage of being natively programmable and automatically compounding.

Currently, around 32.6 percent of the ETH supply is utilized as collateral for decentralized finance (DeFi) or enterprise infrastructure, with an additional 3.5 percent having transitioned to other blockchain networks. As the market for tokenized real-world assets continues to expand, the authors anticipate an increasing demand for a “globally neutral, censorship-resistant reserve asset” within settlement protocols—a role they argue only ETH can fulfill without external counterparty vulnerabilities.

Projected Milestones for Ethereum

While the aspirational long-term scenario envisions a six-figure ETH value, the analysis provides several key short- and medium-term milestones: a “short-term” price of around $8,000 (equating to a market cap of approximately $1 trillion) and a “medium-term” price target of $80,000 (about $10 trillion in market cap). Four major catalysts for these price movements are identified:

• The accelerated tokenization of real-world assets, coupled with enhanced on-chain institutional infrastructure.
• An increased institutional demand for native staking yields, especially with the anticipated launch of staked ETH exchange-traded funds.
• A growing urgency among investors to accumulate ETH, demonstrated by a nascent strategic-reserve pool that has already gathered nearly $2 billion in publicly acknowledged assets.
• An expanding role for ETH in treasury management, where its neutrality, programmability, and yield create opportunities for automated collateral, escrows, and transactions.

According to the authors, “ETH is uniquely positioned as the neutral reserve asset that can adequately support and secure the global tokenized financial framework,” characterizing the current market price as a “temporary mispricing” rather than a fundamental instability.

Nevertheless, the report acknowledges the complexity surrounding Ethereum’s valuation, which presents challenges compared to Bitcoin’s more straightforward digital-gold narrative. The authors caution against modeling ETH as a traditional technology equity, as discounted cash flow methodologies do not account for its commodity burn or foundational collateral role.

In conclusion, they assert that the multifaceted utility of ETH—as fuel, store of value, collateral, and yield—creates substantial upside potential that could surpass that of Bitcoin. As framed by the report, ETH represents “an entirely new asset class,” necessitating comparisons with energy resources, precious metals, sovereign bonds, and broader money supply metrics rather than mere fee-generating software platforms.

As of the latest data, ETH was trading at around $2,564.