The race is on, and $5,000 is the finish line. But which asset gets there first — gold or Ethereum?
On Myriad, the prediction market built by Decrypt’s parent company Dastan, traders have placed their bets: 65.5% of the money is on ETH reaching $5,000 before gold does.
It’s a bold call considering gold, trading for $4,115 today, is closer to the target, despite registering its biggest one-day correction in over a decade. But the technical analysis reveals why crypto traders might be onto something — and why they could be spectacularly wrong.
Ethereum (ETH) price: Compression before explosion?
Ethereum closed yesterday at $3,892, down 2.3% after touching an intraday high of $4,112. It’s currently trading hands for around $3,900. The weekly chart shows ETH consolidating in what appears to be a classic compression pattern, with all major technical indicators still weakly bullish.
The average price of the last 50 weeks (roughly a year, and otherwise known to traders as the EMA 50) sits above the average price of the last 200 weeks (EMA 200, roughly what’s considered a full crypto market cycle) with those moving averages acting like dynamic support levels. When the faster EMA crosses above the slower EMA (shorter term above the longer term), it means traders expect the overall market movement is bullish in the long run.
The Average Directional Index, or ADX, reads 25.51, just above the critical 25 threshold. ADX measures trend strength regardless of direction — above 25 means there’s an actual trend in place, not just random noise. This reading shows a valid but weakening trend. It’s not screaming momentum, but it’s enough to suggest the bulls still have some gas in the tank.
The Relative Strength Index, or RSI, sits at 53.69, dead center in neutral territory. RSI measures overbought and oversold conditions on a scale of 0-100. Above 70 generally triggers profit-taking from traders; below 30 attracts bargain hunters. At 53, ETH is neither extended nor oversold — it’s in that Goldilocks zone where either direction remains possible.
In terms of supports and resistances, looking at the broader picture, there are at least two scenarios to consider.
The optimistic one shows that ETH is in a short correction respecting the pattern of higher lows since April 2025. If valid, this support line (dotted white in the chart above) takes ETH to $5K at least by Feb 2026.
There is also a pessimistic one that shows ETH in a multi-year horizontal channel, with the coin bouncing after hitting a resistance near the $5K line. If this is the scenario, the short-term dotted line is invalidated and ETH could correct all the way down to around $2K through next year (which is also expected to be a crypto winter if history repeats itself).
