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Sujha Sundararajan

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Sujha Sundararajan

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Sujha has been recognised as Women In Crypto 2024 by BeInCrypto for her leadership in crypto journalism.

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Last updated: 

August 22, 2025

BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes has expressed optimism about Ethereum’s price trajectory, predicting that the world’s second-largest crypto would hit $20,000.

In a recent interview, Hayes said that he has bought back some of the ETH sold. “The chart says it’s going higher, so you can’t fight the market.”

“I think ETH goes $10,000 to $20,000 before the end of the cycle,” he said. “Once it’s broken through, then you know there’s a gap of air to the upside.”

Comparing between ETH and Solana (SOL), he currently overweights on ETH, indicating a strong preference for Ethereum in his current investment strategy.

“My base case is we are going to have a massive bull market and all types of financial assets connected to anything that President Trump believes is important now.”

Last week, Hayes bought $8.4 million in ETH, accumulating 1,500 ETH, alongside substantial positions in blue-chip DeFi tokens, including LDO, ETHFI, and PENDLE.

Ethereum Would Outperform Solana in Bull Run: Arthur Hayes

When asked about Hayes’s preference between the rise in Solana and Ethereum prices now and the end of the cycle, he said both assets would show a bullish trajectory.

“They are both going to go up, but the question is which asset could go up more,” he noted.

He said that Solana would probably not surpass Ethereum in the bull run, but said that it would be a “bigger asset move.”

Is ETH Breakout Imminent?

Ethereum fell 0.64% in the past 24 hours to $4,289, per CoinMarketCap data. The token has slightly bounced back and is seen trading at $4,306 at press time.

However, the significant demand for a spot ETH ETF, along with massive institutional inflows, including companies like Bitmine and Sharplink Gaming acquiring over 2 million ETH since June, has contributed to the recent surge in ETH prices.

The crypto has surged over 15% over the last 30 days, hitting a local high of $4,700 last week and inching closer to an all-time high.

The crypto billionaire’s $20k call isn’t wild if macro and ETF demand align. For now, the crypto community is keeping a close eye on Hayes’ wallet activity, particularly as more capital flows into mid-cap Ethereum ecosystem tokens.

The number of tradable crypto tokens has gone parabolic since 2022, with CoinMarketCap now tracking roughly 18.9 million digital assets, compared to a little over 20,000 in 2022.

In January of that year, roughly 20,000 assets were listed across major trackers. By mid-2025, that universe swelled to an estimated 18.9 million, an astonishing 945x increase in just three and a half years. 

The surge isn’t evenly distributed, as three high-throughput networks are responsible for about 90% of the new supply: Solana, Base, and BNB, driven by low fees, turnkey launchpads, and a culture of rapid experimentation.

The three kings

Solana is the epicenter. Over the past year alone, the chain saw on the order of 18 million new tokens minted as memecoin factories and no-code issuers lowered the barrier to creation to pennies. 

Pump.fun has produced approximately 11.4 million SPL tokens by late July 2025, according to the Dune dashboard by user oladee, which tracks the app’s on-chain mints. That’s up from roughly 8.7 million in March 2025, adding almost 2.7 million in four months, up by 31%. 

The count exceeds the combined new token count on Base, BSC, Tron, Polygon, Optimism, Arbitrum, and Ethereum during the same period. 

The result is a torrent of micro-cap assets, most launched for fun, virality, or speculation, and many never progressing beyond a few wallets and a shallow liquidity pool.

Base has emerged as the fastest follower. In barely a year, developers and creators deployed more than 8.4 million fungible tokens on the network.

Creator coin tooling tied to Zora ignited a rapid mint cycle on Coinbase’s L2. A Dune dashboard by user Sealaunch reported over 1.5 million creator coins minted in 2025, as the model spread, with much of this activity centered on Base following its integration into the Base App. 

In late July, Base briefly outpaced Solana by daily token count as “content coins” turned social posts into micro-tokens at scale.

Binance Smart Chain (BSC), which pioneered the cheap-token boom in 2021, continues to significantly contribute to new token launches. 

BscScan’s token tracker lists nearly 4.7 million BEP-20 token contracts on BNB Chain, the ecosystem that BSC is part of. This highlights its role as a mass-mint venue for fungible assets.

While its share of new issuance has faded relative to Solana and Base, BSC remains a go-to venue for fast, low-cost launches.

Liquidity per token shrinks

The catch to this Cambrian explosion is liquidity. Capital simply hasn’t kept pace with supply. Average stablecoin liquidity per token has collapsed from around $1.8 million in 2021 to roughly $5,500 in early 2025. 

In practical terms, most of the 18.9 million tokens are illiquid, thinly traded, and highly susceptible to manipulation. Prices can rocket or crater on a few hundred dollars of flow, and rug-pulls remain a risk wherever low-effort issuance thrives.

That imbalance is reshaping market structure. Despite the proliferation of assets, value continues to concentrate in a few hundred names, with Bitcoin’s and Ethereum’s dominance climbing as capital consolidates into proven networks while the long tail languishes. 

For teams, the sheer existence of a token no longer confers value. Protocols must prove durable demand by showing users, fees, cash flows, or compelling utility to attract liquidity in a saturated field.

Networks face their own trade-offs. High throughput and low fees empower permissionless creativity but also invite spam and churn. 

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