Wall Street banking giant Citigroup has issued a new forecast for Ethereum (ETH), noting that the second-ranked cryptocurrency by market cap is likely to face a correction toward the end of the year.
The bank projects Ethereum will trade at around $4,300 by the close of 2025, calling this the most likely outcome given current market dynamics.
In a bullish scenario, where adoption and inflows accelerate, Citi sees Ethereum climbing as high as $6,400. Conversely, if network usage lags behind investor enthusiasm, prices could fall to $2,200.
At the same time, Citi’s analysis focused on how much value Ethereum captures from its expanding ecosystem.
Despite booming rollup and scaling activity, the bank estimates only 30% of this growth contributes directly to ETH’s valuation, suggesting the token may be trading ahead of its fundamentals.
The rise of Layer-2 networks has boosted usage and utility, but limited value flows back to Ethereum’s base layer. Citi’s model indicates that current prices are driven more by investor optimism around tokenization and stablecoins than by core on-chain activity.
Ethereum price analysis
The forecast comes as Ethereum recently hit a record high near $5,000 before pulling back in line with broader markets. As of press time, ETH was trading at $4,507, down less than 0.5% on the day but up 3.6% over the past week.
At its current valuation, Ethereum remains comfortably above both its 50-day simple moving average (SMA) of $4,216.62 and its 200-day SMA of $2,866.72. This positioning signals strong underlying momentum, as prices holding above these averages often reflect sustained bullish trends.
Meanwhile, the 14-day relative strength index (RSI) sits at 55.39, placing Ethereum in neutral territory—neither overbought nor oversold.
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