Arthur Hayes, the co-founder and CEO of BitMEX, the world’s largest cryptocurrency derivatives trading platform, recently predicted that the price of Ethereum’s native token, ether (ETH), will “rebound aggressively.”
Hayes, who previously worked at Deutsche Bank and as head trader at Citi, told Cointelegraph Japan that the main use case for Ethereum is to use its blockchain network to launch initial coin offerings (ICOs). However, Hayes noted that the ICO market is “dead” right now and that it will likely return within “18 months.”
Hayes: Ether Could “Quickly Test” $200
Explaining how the price of ether could recover, the Wharton Business school graduate remarked:
The use case for Ether is primarily ICOs. That market is dead right now … Once there are new issues (ICOs), then ether will rebound aggressively. When the ICO market returns, ether will quickly test $200. The timing of the ICO rebirth is 12 to 18 months out.
As CryptoGlobe reported in mid-August, Hayes called ether a “shitcoin” as its price had mostly been pumped by speculative venture capitalists and ICO projects. At the time, ether’s price dropped below the $300 mark and Hayes said the companies and inexperienced investors that invested in the cryptocurrency and/or ERC-20 tokens would likely dump their holdings as they would not be able to stomach more losses.
Notably, the price of ETH has since dropped below $100 as Hayes predicted it would, but has now recovered and the token is trading at around $130.
Security Tokens & Stablecoins
In his recent interview, Hayes also predicted that stablecoins will be dominating the cryptoasset markets before the ICO market comes back (in the next 12-18 months). The BitMEX co-founder noted:
Security tokens and stablecoins will prove attractive sirens for investors in 2019. While their fundamental raison d'etre is flawed, investors in this time of pain will latch onto anything they believe will be their ticket to easy riches.
As covered by CryptoGlobe in November, Asher Tan, the founder of Australia-based crypto exchange, Coinjar, has predicted that stablecoins would be the “next big thing.” Tan, who launched Coinjar in 2013 along with computer scientist Ryan Zhou remarked:
The interesting thing right now, what's on everyone's lips … [are] stablecoins … It's a craze right now … It helps you transfer money around the crypto ecosystem at a stable rate. But there's a whole lot of applications or use-cases that could come out of it.
Tan also revealed there are now an increasing number of software engineers, economists, and traditional investors who have started to take more interest in stablecoins. Commenting on active involvement of a relatively large number of players in the development of USD-pegged coins, Tan noted “these are things that usually only a central bank would have thought about five years ago, and now you’ve got tech start-ups looking at economics, and how can you peg a currency to a token.”
