DeFi pioneer coughs up $50K after making a pretty bad bet on Ether

Crypto executive Kain Warwick is set to pay up $50,000 after betting that Ether would hit $25,000 in 2025, joining one of many market participants who overestimated the speed of Ether’s recovery after its dip in October.

Ether (ETH) ended Dec. 31 trading at roughly $2,980, around 13.7% lower than where it started at the beginning of the year, according to CoinMarketCap.

Part of it was due to a $19 billion crypto market liquidation on Oct. 10 that triggered a downtrend, pushing Ether as low as $2,767 before it slowly crept upward again.

The bet came from an exchange between Warwick and Multicoin managing partner Kyle Samani in November. Samani doubted the chances that Ether (ETH) could recover and hit $25,000 by the end of the year.

Warwick disagreed, making a bet at 10:1 odds that it had a chance.

“Time to pay up,” Samani said in an X post directed at Warwick on Wednesday.

Ether is down 2.18% over the past 30 days. Source: CoinMarketCap

Warwick, like many others, had high hopes for Ether last year, given surging institutional adoption and moves toward real world asset tokenization.

Speaking to Cointelegraph on Friday, Warwick toned down his new Ether price target for 2026 in light of the recent loss, with a “measly $10,000.”

“Akkkkktually [Actually] ETH is up 50% from when we made our bet. Just needed another clean 8x for me to win,” Warwick said.

Other analysts were tipping around $10K

Just weeks before Warwick doubled down on Ether, BitMine chair Tom Lee speculated the cryptocurrency could end the year at roughly $10,000.

“For Ethereum, somewhere between [$10,000] and $12,000,” Lee said on the Bankless podcast on Oct. 13.

Meanwhile, BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes, who also appeared on the same podcast episode, said he is “going to stay consistent” with his $10,000 prediction by the end of the year.

Related: Crypto sentiment shifts off extreme fear, but ‘mixed emotions’ persist

While the price didn’t get there, Ethereum instead made other milestones in 2025.

Ethereum had two major upgrades in 2025, Pectra in May and Fusaka in December. The Ethereum Foundation stated that Fusaka brings Ethereum a step closer to providing “near-instant transactions.”

On Thursday, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said that Ethereum needed to do more to achieve its mission of “[building] the world computer that serves as a central infrastructure piece of a more free and open internet.”

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