Hayes, chief investment officer at Maelstrom and co founder of BitMEX, argued that Robinhood’s decision gives other large financial companies a reference point when considering Ethereum for their own blockchain infrastructure.
He said companies can now point to one of the world’s largest retail financial platforms when making an internal case for building on Ethereum. If that trend gains traction, Hayes expects the narrative around Ethereum to improve and Ether to reach roughly $5,000 within a year.
Ether traded around $2,650 when Hayes made the remarks, meaning a move to his target would require a gain of close to 89%.
Robinhood Chain puts Ethereum at the center of its network
Robinhood Chain gives Hayes a working example of a large financial company using Ethereum infrastructure for products designed around traditional and digital assets.
Robinhood launched the network’s public mainnet on July 1 as an Ethereum Layer 2 built using Arbitrum technology. The company designed the chain for financial services and tokenized real world assets, including equities, exchange traded funds and private assets.
Robinhood’s documentation says the network uses Ethereum blobs for data availability and $ETH as its native gas token. Its canonical bridge connects the Layer 2 directly with Ethereum, while withdrawals to the mainnet pass through the standard Arbitrum challenge period.
The brokerage said at launch that the network had integrations with infrastructure providers including Alchemy, BitGo and Chainlink. Uniswap deployed a dedicated automated market maker on the chain as Robinhood expanded its tokenized finance products.
Early activity brought substantial amounts of $ETH onto the network. Crypto.news previously reported that bridged Ether crossed $70 million within the first week after launch.
Token Terminal said at the time that continued adoption could turn the network into “a meaningful new source of demand for $ETH.” Daily active users had reached 194,000, while Robinhood Chain held 46,748 $ETH before its total value locked moved above $100 million.
Uniswap founder Hayden Adams said most transactions on the network were denominated in $ETH, describing Ether as its base trading pair, highest volume asset and gas token.
Activity continued after the initial launch period. By August, Robinhood Chain had recorded nearly $9 billion in cumulative decentralized exchange volume, while BitMine Chairman Tom Lee said the brokerage could potentially connect its 27 million customers with Ethereum based financial services.
Lee said Robinhood users paying transaction fees denominated in $ETH could expose more everyday investors to Ether as a form of money.
Ethereum price faces $2,800 hurdle before $5,000
Hayes’ $5,000 target sits well above the levels Ethereum has been testing in recent sessions.
$ETH rallied from around $2,400 in mid September and briefly approached $2,800 before sellers pushed the token back below $2,700. On Sept. 23, Ethereum reached an intraday high near $2,789 before falling as low as $2,648.
Despite the rejection, the token remained above several longer term moving averages. Ethereum held above its 4 hour 50, 100 and 200 period moving averages at the time, while the pullback placed $2,700 back in focus as an immediate level for buyers to reclaim.
The $2,800 region remains the first major barrier before $ETH can attempt a move toward $3,000. A sustained break above that area would still leave Ether roughly 40% below Hayes’ $5,000 target.
Market conditions have provided some support through exchange traded fund demand. U.S. spot Ether ETFs recorded $689.8 million in net inflows during the five trading sessions from Sept. 21 through Sept. 25.
The funds received $270 million on Monday, followed by $162.2 million on Tuesday, $104.5 million on Wednesday, $66.1 million on Thursday and $87 million on Friday, giving the products five consecutive positive sessions.
BlackRock’s ETHA accounted for $326.2 million of the weekly total, while Fidelity’s FETH received $174.1 million. BlackRock’s staking focused ETHB fund took in another $47.5 million.
The weekly inflows reversed roughly $140.6 million in Ether ETF outflows recorded during the previous week.
Ethereum staking demand remains elevated
Ethereum’s staking market has shown another source of demand for $ETH while its price remains below the $2,800 resistance area.
Validator Queue data on Sept. 28 showed approximately 1.61 million $ETH waiting to enter staking, compared with roughly 161,000 $ETH waiting to exit. The entry queue was nearly 10 times larger than the exit queue.
Around 43.5 million $ETH was staked across the network, equal to 35.66% of supply, with 889,387 active validators. New validators faced a waiting period of almost 28 days, compared with less than three days for validators seeking to exit.
Staking removes $ETH from immediately liquid supply while the assets remain committed to Ethereum’s proof of stake system, though $ETH leaving exchanges or entering staking does not by itself establish future price direction.
Hayes’ prediction depends in part on institutional use of Ethereum growing beyond Robinhood. Robinhood describes its chain as a permissionless network designed for tokenized real world assets, where stocks, ETFs and other financial instruments can be represented and traded onchain.
Robinhood reported in July that its international funded customers had passed 1 million during the second quarter. Its tokenized stock products were made available to eligible users in more than 120 countries through Robinhood Wallet when the company launched the Chain mainnet.
The Layer 2 has since faced questions over how much of its economic activity ultimately reaches Ethereum itself. Robinhood Chain collected roughly $4.5 million in transaction fees on Sept. 3 while spending an estimated $398 to post data and proofs to Ethereum, according to data cited earlier this month.
Bitquery counted 597 million transactions on Robinhood Chain through Sept. 3 and approximately $23 million in cumulative fees, while $ETH remained the network’s native gas token.
