Citibank: Ethereum may fall to $4,300 by the end of the year

According to Coinjie.com, on September 16 (UTC+8), Wall Street giant Citigroup recently released a new forecast for Ethereum (ETH). Under its basic scenario, Ethereum price will fall to $4,300 by the end of the year, lower than the current level of about $4,515. The bank's forecast range is wide, with Ethereum price likely to rise to $6,400 in a bull market scenario, while in a bear market scenario, it may fall to $2,200. Citibank analysts pointed out that network activity remains a key driver of Ethereum’s value, but most of the recent growth has occurred on the Layer 2 network, and it is unclear how its value is "passed" to the Ethereum mainnet. The report assumes that only 30% of Layer 2 activity will contribute to Ethereum's valuation, which makes Ethereum currently price higher than its model estimates based on network activity. Analysts believe this may be due to strong capital inflows and market enthusiasm for tokenization and stablecoins. The report also mentioned that although the inflow of funds from Ethereum ETFs is smaller than that of Bitcoin ETFs, it has a greater impact on prices. However, given Ethereum's smaller market capitalization and its lower visibility among novice investors, Citi expects its ETF inflows to remain limited. In addition, the report believes that macroeconomic factors can only provide moderate support. Given that the S&P 500 index is close to Citi's 6,600-point target, analysts do not believe that risky assets will have significant upside.