• Ethereum Sees Short-Term Gains, Long-Term Outlook Remains Cautious
• Technical Analysis Suggests a Temporary Relief Rally, Not a Reversal
• Buterin’s Bold RISC-V Proposal Could Redefine ETH Architecture

Ethereum (ETH) is currently trading at $1,643.48, a 3.26% increase over the past 24 hours. Trading volumes have surged significantly, climbing 51.45% to $11.19 billion, signaling a renewed wave of investor interest. Despite the positive intraday performance, ETH seven-day change remains marginal at just 0.53%.

ETH recently surged into a resistance level at $1,635, following an extended period of consolidation. While the move exhibits strength on lower time frames, broader trends continue to suggest a bearish undertone.

The Relative Strength Index (RSI) for both 15-minute and 1-hour charts indicates overbought conditions, while the MACD shows signs of exhaustion. Analysts advise caution, suggesting that this price action is likely a relief rally rather than the start of a sustained uptrend.

Scalpers are watching two potential setups: a short at current resistance or a long trade on a confirmed breakout toward $1,680. Key support levels to monitor include $1,600 and $1,530.

Market forecasters from Changelly have released a tempered outlook for Ethereum’s price trajectory heading into 2025. According to their data-driven analysis, ETH is expected to average $2,993.84 next year, with a projected maximum of $2,430.91 and a floor near $1,867.98. For April 2025, expectations are even more conservative, with prices likely fluctuating between $1,600.28 and $1,979.26.

These predictions imply a potential ROI of -38.1% to -49.6%, depending on the entry point. Analysts suggest that while Ethereum’s core fundamentals remain strong, market conditions and broader macroeconomic factors could inhibit sharp upside movement in the short to mid-term.

In a significant development for Ethereum’s future architecture, co-founder Vitalik Buterin has floated a bold new proposal to replace the ETH Virtual Machine (EVM) with RISC-V, a free, open-source instruction set architecture. Sharing his thoughts in a detailed post on the ETH Magicians forum, Buterin argued that this change could drastically reduce on-chain execution costs, potentially by up to 100x in select use cases.

This radical shift is positioned as part of Ethereum’s long-term vision to enhance both scalability and modularity. Crucially, Buterin emphasized backward compatibility, ensuring that existing smart contracts built on EVM would remain operable through binary support and interpreters. The RISC-V model is not entirely novel to blockchain; similar implementations have been explored by other platforms, such as Polkadot’s PolkaVM in 2023.

If adopted, the proposal could usher in a new era for ETH, aligning its infrastructure with open computing standards while laying the groundwork for broader adoption and efficiency.