Arthur Hayes believes that the price of Ethereum could almost double within about a year, reaching $5,000, because Robinhood uses Ethereum in its blockchain, making it easier for other large financial institutions to adopt this network.
According to media reports on September 28th, Hayes made this prediction on EastPoint : Seoul 2026. He pointed out that Robinhood's decision to use Ethereum as the security layer behind its blockchain could become a catalyst for broader institutional adoption.
Hayes said, " Robinhood has chosen Ethereum as the security layer for its own blockchain. Robinhood has initiated a new narrative for Ethereum."
Hayes is the Chief Investment Officer of Maelstrom and also a co-founder of BitMEX. He believes that the decision made by Robinhood provides a reference point for other large financial companies when considering Ethereum blockchain infrastructure.
He stated that when these companies are internally promoting development based on Ethereum, we can now take one of the largest retail financial platforms in the world as an example. If this trend continues, the narrative surrounding Ethereum is expected to improve, and the price of Ethereum could rise to around $5,000 within a year.
When Hayes made the above remarks, the price of Ether was around $2,650. This means that to achieve his target, the price would need to increase by nearly 89%.
Robinhood Chain Keeping Ethereum at the Core of the Network
Robinhood Chain provided a real-world example for Hayes, demonstrating that large financial companies are using Ethereum infrastructure to support products designed around traditional and digital assets.
Robinhood launched the public mainnet of this network on July 1st. This network is built on Arbitrum technology and is an Ethereum Layer 2, targeting financial services and tokenization of real-world assets, including stocks, exchange-traded funds, and private assets.
According to the documentation for Robinhood, this network utilizes Ethereum blobs for data availability processing and uses ETH as its native gas token. Its official bridge directly connects Layer2 to Ethereum, while withdrawals to the mainnet go through a standard Arbitrum challenge period.
When launching the service, the brokerage firm stated that it had completed integration with infrastructure providers such as Alchemy, BitGo, and Chainlink. As Robinhood expanded its tokenized financial products, Uniswap deployed dedicated automated market makers on that blockchain.
Early activities brought a large amount of ETH to the network. Crypto.news previously reported that the Ether that bridged into the network exceeded 70 million US dollars in its first week of operation.
At that time, Token Terminal stated that continued adoption could turn the network into an important new source of demand for ETH. When the daily active users reached 194,000, and before the total locked-up value rose above 100 million US dollars, Robinhood Chain held 46,748 ETH.
The founder, Hayden Adams, stated that most transactions on the network are denominated in ETH. They also referred to Ether as the base trading pair, the asset with the highest trading volume, and gas as the token.
After the initial launch phase, the activities continued. By August, the cumulative trading volume on the decentralized exchange Robinhood Chain had approached 9 billion US dollars, and Tom Lee, the chairman of BitMine, stated that the brokerage firm might connect its 27 million customers with Ethereum-based financial services.
Lee says that Robinhood users who charge transaction fees based on ETH might allow more ordinary investors to come into contact with Ether as a form of currency.
Ethereum price still faces resistance at $2,800 before attempting to break through $5,000
The $5,000 target set by Hayes is significantly higher than the level seen in Ethereum's recent tests.
ETH rebounded from around $2,400 in mid-September and once approached $2,800, but subsequent selling pressure pushed it back below $2,700. On September 23rd, Ethereum peaked at nearly $2,789 during the session, before falling to a low of $2,648 later on.
Despite the decline, the token is still above several longer-term moving averages. At that time, Ethereum was still above the 4-hour 50, 100, and 200-day moving averages, and this pullback has made $2,700 once again the immediate level that buyers need to regain.
The $2,800 range remains the main resistance before ETH attempts to move towards $3,000. Even if it continues to break through this range, Ether is still about 40% short of Hayes's $5,000 target.
The market environment has received some support due to the demand for exchange-traded funds. The US spot Ethereum ETF recorded a net inflow of $689.8 million over the five trading days from September 21 to September 25.
On Monday, there was an inflow of $270 million, on Tuesday $162.2 million, on Wednesday $104.5 million, on Thursday $66.1 million, and on Friday $87 million, allowing these products to maintain a net inflow for five consecutive trading days.
BlackRock's ETHA accounted for a total weekly inflow of 326.2 million US dollars, while Fidelity's FETH garnered 174.1 million US dollars. BlackRock's ETHB fund, which focuses on staking, attracted an additional 47.5 million US dollars.
This week's net inflow reversed the net outflow of approximately $140.6 million from the previous week.
Ethereum staking demand remains high.
While the price is still below the $2,800 resistance level, the Ethereum staking market shows another source of demand for ETH.
Data from Validator Queue on September 28th shows that approximately 1.61 million ETH are waiting to be staked, while about 161,000 ETH are waiting to be unstaked. The number of coins waiting to be staked is nearly ten times that of those waiting to be unstaked.
Approximately 43.5 million ETH tokens have been staked across the network, accounting for 35.66% of the total supply, with 889,387 active verifiers. The waiting time for new verifiers is nearly 28 days, while those wishing to exit have a waiting time of less than 3 days.
Pledge will remove ETH from the immediately tradable supply, as these assets are still locked within Ethereum’s proof-of-stake system. However, whether ETH leaves the exchange or enters into a pledge does not in itself determine the future price direction.
The prediction for Hayes depends on Ethereum gaining more institutional adoption beyond Robinhood. Robinhood describes its blockchain as a permissionless network designed to support the tokenization of real-world assets; stocks, ETF, and other financial instruments can all be represented and traded on this chain.
Robinhood stated in July that the number of its international customers who had made investments had exceeded 1 million in the second quarter. When the company launched the Chain mainnet, eligible users will be able to use its tokenized stock products in over 120 countries through Robinhood Wallet.
However, this Layer also faces a problem after that: how much of its economic activity actually flows back to Ethereum itself in the end. According to data cited earlier this month, Robinhood Chain collected approximately $4.5 million in transaction fees on September 3, while the estimated cost of submitting data and proofs to Ethereum was only about $398.
Bitquery Statistics show that as of September 3, the trading volume of Robinhood Chain reached 597 million transactions, with cumulative fees of approximately 23 million US dollars, while ETH remains the native gas token of that network.
