10x Research: It is expected that ETH's performance in 2025 will once again be inferior to BTC, and Pectra upgrade is not optimistic

Odaily Planet Daily News 10x Research director Markus Thielen said in a recent market report, 'While we cannot rule out the possibility of new catalysts, we would not be surprised if ETH struggles to achieve a meaningful rebound in 2025. Despite understanding the volatility of ETH, we still believe it is a poor medium-term investment and expect ETH to underperform BTC again in 2025. Therefore, our position on ETH remains clear: 'avoid'.

According to Thielen, one of the most interesting metrics to watch in 2025 will be the trend of active validators. He noted, however, that the 1-month growth rate of ETH Square validators has turned negative, falling by about 1% in the last 30 days, raising concerns about the increased risk of more validators exiting the network. Thielen said the increase in unstaking seems "logical", and he believes that the ETH workshop lacks "real demand" beyond staking. He also said that the ETH Ethereum upgrade in March last year (which reduced the network's gas fees and allowed it to process more transactions) was "six months late," missing the peak of the Meme coin's rally, leading the market to "turn to" the "more cost-effective" Solana alternative. He is also skeptical of the Pectra upgrade scheduled for early 2025, stating that "only two of the 19 upgrades so far have had a significant positive impact on ETH prices, and these upgrades have occurred during the Bitcoin bull market." He added, "The three major catalysts for Ethereum in 2024 have basically failed, overall they did not bring any value."