Chapter 1: Where does ETH currently stand in the market cycle?
Bankless Nation, today we're going to check in on Ether, the asset. Where is ETH in the cycle? My favorite cycle investor, Michael Nadeau from the DeFi Report is on the podcast today.
Chapter 2: What historical performance trends can we learn from ETH cycles?
We do these episodes on the Bankless feed every month. And this one, I asked Mike to prepare a little information for the ETH holders among us. Mike and I have talked a lot about fair market value metrics for Bitcoin, the weekly moving averages, MVRV, all of the metrics. We've looked at many charts about Bitcoin.
But ETH has its own cycle that is related to the broader crypto cycle, yet also independent of Bitcoin.
Chapter 3: How has Ethereum's L2 roadmap affected its value capture?
So what do Mike's numbers say about ETH price in the months to come? I want to know if he thinks it's bottomed. If not, when is it going to bottom? ETH is one of three assets that Mike has held from the last cycle. So I know he owns some. Is he planning to buy more? If so, when?
Chapter 4: What valuation metrics are essential for evaluating ETH?
Now, I should qualify. Unlike many guests on Bankless, Mike is not an ETH permable. He is bullish ETH, has been bullish ETH various times, but he's looking at this from a fairly neutral perspective. That is, What do the on-chain fundamentals actually say for this asset?
Chapter 5: What discrepancies exist in Ethereum's valuation methods?
Mike, it's great to have you. I know Bitcoin is your favorite asset. Historically, ETH has been a second, maybe not a close second, but definitely a second.
Chapter 6: How do market conditions influence Ethereum's performance?
Is ETH still your second favorite asset in crypto or does this cycle, does it have to prove itself once again this cycle? Hey, Ryan. Yeah, great to be here. And that's a great question, I think, to lead in here. I would say that the way I think of this is I think of Bitcoin as sort of a thing that we want to anchor our portfolio in.
We've had periods where we were more bullish on ETH, less bullish on ETH. We still own some ETH currently in our portfolio.
And, you know, one of the things that I like about the cyclicality of the crypto markets and just kind of like the sort of four year nature of these markets is that we get a chance to kind of like underwrite our thesis for Bitcoin, for ETH, for other assets that we may want to invest in. And so I think this episode today is kind of an opportunity to kind of go back.
And sort of analyze like just high level, like what has happened with ETH over these last few years?
Chapter 7: What insights can we gain from DEX volumes on Ethereum?
You know, where are we going? And kind of get into some of the kind of like, where are we at in the cycle? Are we bottoming right now? So yeah, excited to get into it. But I would say ETH, to answer the question, ETH has to prove itself to me. And like we can kind of get into what I'm looking for in this episode. All right.
So ETH has an opportunity to prove itself to Mike this cycle in order for him to re-underwrite whether it should be included in the DeFi report portfolio. Before we get into this episode, I want to thank our friends and sponsors over at Galaxy. This one is for the institutional capital listening, whether you are looking at the future of finance or the backbone of the next industrial revolution.
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Chapter 8: What does the future hold for ETH in terms of fair market value?
of power. So go check them out. If you want to see how Galaxy helps institutions and crypto and AI invest, build and transform, go check them out. There's a link in the show notes. All right, Mike, as we enter this episode, ETH price is just hovering above 2K. So it's hanging in there in this bear market.
I actually want to go back and talk about the history of ETH across the three cycles that it's been around. So it hasn't been around as long as Bitcoin, but it's been around for a while. We've got 10 years or so clocking in. So there's been three cycles that ETH has boomed and then busted so far. The first was 2017. And the bottom of that cycle, you know, sometime in late 2016, ETH was $8.
So just imagine that, not 2K, but $8. In 2017, at the peak, this lasted into January 2018, ETH went from $8 to $1,400. Wow. So this was incredible growth. This was 175x in the first cycle. So remember that. Cycle 1, 175x from trough to peak. Cycle 2, this was 2021, we saw a 61x gain. So that's 6,000%. The trough there, we hit this in December 2018, $80.
By November 2021, that turned out to be the top, we were at 4,878. So 61X in cycle two. 175X cycle one, 61X cycle two. Let's talk about the most recent cycle that ended in 2025. So there, we troughed down to, in June 2022, And then our peak for this cycle was 4,953. So barely an all-time high eking in from the previous cycle. So the gain this cycle wasn't 175X, wasn't 61X, it was 5.6X.
All right, a much smaller number. And so I think a lot of investors in crypto and for ETH right now are asking this question. Was this just a skipped cycle for ETH? Or is this now the new normal? Like that level of performance is kind of anemic compared to previous cycles. Is that just where we are now?
Or do you think for whatever reason, this cycle just was not favorable to ETH and it'll come back stronger next time around? Yeah, I think this is the big question. And that's a very interesting kind of just framing of just kind of those, you know, diminishing returns of the last three cycles.
Maybe if you just zoom out to like the max on that chart, right, we kind of look at this a little bit from a broader perspective. And what you can see here is a rising sort of, you know, base, which is a good sign and I think a healthy chart. You can see these massive moves that we made in the first two cycles.
And then, you know, in this last cycle, we've mostly just actually sort of traded within the range that was established back in 2021, 2022, which is interesting. This is This is unique for ETH. And if you look at a lot of crypto charts out there, this one's unique, right?
It used to look like most of the other ones where you had the first sort of Bitcoin big move back in 2017, and then you had 21. But most of the assets out there, you see either they just never come back or they have another big third peak. With ETH, we didn't get either of those. We sort of stayed in the middle zone.
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