As Ethereum celebrates its 10th anniversary, looking back at its growth trajectory so far is truly astonishing. Over these 10 years, its market capitalization has increased by 3,600 times, significantly surpassing NVIDIA's 150 times and Bitcoin's 300 times. In just a decade, it has risen to become one of the top 30 assets worldwide.

Currently, the price is around $2,340, with a market size exceeding $280 billion. However, what many overlook is that this is only the beginning. When considering Ethereum price forecasts, it’s crucial to focus not just on speculation but on how far its practical use as a financial system can expand.

Over the past decade, Ethereum has indeed become one of the safest financial systems. Its mainnet has never experienced a shutdown or crash. It has supported over $20 trillion in stablecoin transactions annually, hundreds of billions of dollars in DeFi, and the NFT market. Just as Apple has continuously created innovative products, at least three breakthrough products have emerged from the Ethereum ecosystem.

What will happen in the next 10 years? This is the key question. Currently, Ethereum has about 10 million monthly users. Even if the user base increases by 100 times, that’s only around 1 billion people—roughly the world’s population. Visa and MasterCard each issue over 3 billion cards. Therefore, when making Ethereum price forecasts, this growth potential cannot be ignored.

The growth curve of stablecoins makes this clear. From 2016 to 2021, over five years, their market cap grew from $1 million to $100 billion—a 100-fold increase. The same pattern could occur with the tokenization of US Treasuries and US stocks. Currently, US dollar stablecoins on Ethereum total about $300 billion, which is less than 1% of a $40 trillion market.

A crisis in the global financial system always exists. Economic crises, pandemics, wars, currency crises—each time they occur, demand for alternative systems like Ethereum arises. About 10 countries are excluded from mainstream finance, and 30 to 50 countries are marginalized, all needing stable currencies and cross-border transactions. Ethereum is the only viable option to provide that.

The competitive advantages of security and decentralization cannot be overlooked. Ethereum has a record of zero downtime over 10 years. In contrast, Solana has experienced more than 10 major outages in just five years. This reliability gap will likely have a significant impact on long-term price forecasts.

There is also potential for Ethereum to surpass Bitcoin. Its current inflation rate is between -0.2% and 0.5%, lower than Bitcoin, gold, or major currencies. Furthermore, if a US Ethereum spot ETF and staking-enabled ETFs start in October, they could generate an additional annual yield of about 3%. This could become the third growth engine.

In 2017, Ethereum’s market cap reached 80% of Bitcoin’s. Currently, it’s around 20%, but considering the difference in practicality, there’s a strong possibility that this ratio could reverse again. When forecasting Ethereum’s price, it’s essential to view it not just as speculation but within the context of a structural shift in the global financial system.

The crypto industry cannot exist without Ethereum. Just as the AI industry cannot thrive without Nvidia, even if Ethereum’s users and TVL grow 100 times over the next decade, it would still account for less than 2% of global financial assets. In other words, true growth is still ahead.