Infinex Founder Loses $50K From ETH 2025 Year-End Price
Joining one of the many market participants speculating on the speed of Ether's recovery after its dip in October, Cain Warwick was prepared to pay $50,000 after betting that Ether would hit $25,000.
Ether (ETH) ended trading at about $2,980 on December 31, down 13.7% from where it started the year, according to CoinMarketCap.
Partly due to the $19 billion crypto market liquidation on October 10, it triggered bearish trading, sending Ether down to $2,767 before slowly creeping back up again.
The bet stems from an exchange between Warwick and Multicoin managing partner Kyle Samani in November. Samani doubts the possibility that Ether (ETH) can recover and may hit $25,000 by the end of the year.
Warwick disagreed, betting odds of 10:1.
“It's payback time,” Samani said in an X post hosted by Warwick on Wednesday.
Warwick, like many others, has had high hopes for Ether over the past year as institutional adoption has increased and it's transition into a real-world asset token.
Speaking to Cointelegraph on Friday, Warwick lowered his new Ether price target for 2026 to “just $10,000” in light of recent losses.
“Kkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk [Actually] ETH has increased by 50% since we finished betting. I needed another clean 8x to win,” Warwick said.
Other analysts were offering around $10,000.
Weeks before Warwick doubled on Ether, BitMine chairman Tom Lee predicted the cryptocurrency could end the year at around $10,000.
“For Ethereum, somewhere in between [$10,000] And $12,000,” he said on the Oct. 13 Bankless podcast.
Meanwhile, BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes, who appeared on the same podcast episode, said he would “continue to stay consistent” with his $10,000 forecast by the end of the year.
Related: Crypto Sentiment Moves From Extreme Fear, But ‘Mixed Emotions' Persist
While the price didn't reach there, Ethereum made other milestones in 2025 instead.
Ethereum had two major upgrades in 2025, Pectra in May and Fusaka in December. The Ethereum Foundation's Fusaka has announced that it will introduce a move to make Ethereum “real-time transactions.”
On Thursday, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin said that Ethereum needs to do more to achieve its “mission.[building] The World Computer, which serves as the central infrastructure, is a more free and open Internet service.
Magazine: How crypto rules changed in 2025 – and how they will change in 2026
