Key takeaways:

Ether has rebounded from key parabolic and triangle support levels, reviving the case for a $10,000 breakout.

Historical fractals and RSI recovery mirror past pre-rally setups seen in 2016 and 2020.

Altseason signals and strength against rivals like SOL and XRP boost Ethereum’s potential to outperform.

Ether (ETH), Ethereum’s native token, has soared over 44% in just three days to surpass $2,600 on May 11, fueling fresh speculation of a run toward $10,000 in the coming months.

A mix of fractal setups as well as Ether’s potential to outperform its top-ranking rivals, Bitcoin (BTC), Solana (SOL), and XRP (XRP), are serving as some catalysts behind the five-figure price prediction.

ETH’s “up band” target is around $10,000

Ether’s long-term price action continues to follow a parabolic curve that has defined its major market cycles since 2015.

As of May 2025, ETH has rebounded from the curve’s lower boundary near $2,100 — a historically significant support zone that has previously triggered major rallies.

ETH/USD monthly price chart. Source: TradingView

If this parabolic trajectory holds, Ethereum’s next move could be toward the upper boundary of the curve, which currently intersects near the $10,000 level.

Supporting this view, analyst MilkyBull Crypto highlights a similar setup on Ethereum’s monthly chart, noting that ETH’s rally to $10,000 “can’t be ruled out technically.”

Source: MilkyBull Crypto

Combined with RSI recovery from a multi-year support zone near 40, the setup adds further weight to the five-figure price target.

ETH looks set to outperform top crypto rivals

The bullish outlook for Ethereum is gaining traction as analysts anticipate an altcoin season in the coming months.

Chartist Mister Crypto, for instance, argues that altcoins like ETH may rally 40% in a single day amid capital rotation from Bitcoin.

Source: Mister Crypto

The Altcoin Season Index, which has broken out of a downtrend just below the 29 level, signals a potential shift away from Bitcoin dominance. While still in “Bitcoin Season” territory (below 25), the breakout suggests altcoins like ETH may soon begin to outperform.

Additionally, Ethereum’s top blockchain rival, Solana, is painting a rising wedge pattern against Ether, furthering its potential to decline in the coming weeks.

Related: Solana lacks ‘convincing signs’ of besting Ethereum: Sygnum

SOL/ETH weekly and XRP/ETH three-day performance chart. Source: Wolf/TradingView

The same picture can be seen against XRP, suggesting that more capital may flow toward Ethereum from rival altcoins in the coming days or weeks.

Ether symmetrical triangle hints at above $10,000

As of May, Ether is reclaiming the lower trendline of its multi-year symmetrical triangle after a brief breakdown in March, while bouncing off its 200-2W exponential moving average (200-2W EMA; the blue wave) support.

ETH’s rebound confirms a bullish rejection, validating the ongoing consolidation structure.

ETH/USD two-week price chart. Source: TradingView

This setup closely resembles ETH’s past macro consolidations, namely the 2016 bull flag and the 2018–2020 falling wedge, both of which preceded major breakouts to new all-time highs.

A breakout above the current triangle consolidation could follow a similar trajectory, increasing the probability of ETH reaching the $10,000 mark — and even $20,000 if the breakout pans out per the rules of technical analysis.

ETH/USD weekly price chart. Source: TradingView

This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision.

Opinion by: Sean Li, co-founder of Magic Labs

Crypto markets run 24/7. Human traders don’t. As AI agents begin to manage liquidity, optimize yield, and execute trades at all hours, they’re quickly becoming essential infrastructure for decentralized finance’s (DeFi) future. While AI agents are evolving from niche tools for quant traders into mainstream financial operators, they’re rapidly outpacing the wallets meant to secure them. 

Advancements in account abstraction and smart contract wallets have emerged, but most DeFi platforms still predominately rely on externally owned account wallets that require manual approvals at every step. Early-stage programmable solutions exist but remain fragmented, costly on layer-1 networks and adopted by only a tiny fraction of users.

As AI agents increasingly operate in DeFi, this infrastructure limitation becomes critical. We need standardized infrastructure that allows for secure, cost-effective automation with verifiable guardrails across multiple blockchain ecosystems. 

Automation needs guardrails, not guesswork

The rise of autonomous agents opens new possibilities: hands-free DeFi strategies, real-time portfolio optimization and crosschain arbitrage. Without programmable permissions and onchain visibility, however, delegating control to AI can expose users to catastrophic risk. Malicious bots, hallucinating agents and poorly designed automation can drain wallets before a human notices.

We’ve already seen what happens when agent infrastructure fails. In September 2024, users of the Telegram-based trading bot Banana Gun lost 563 Ether (ETH) (approximately $1.9 million) through an exploited oracle vulnerability that allowed attackers to intercept messages and gain unauthorized access to user wallets. More recently, attackers breached Aixbt’s dashboard and issued commands to transfer funds directly, resulting in the loss of 55.5 ETH worth over $100,000. These aren’t isolated incidents — they are warning signs of systemic vulnerability in our automation infrastructure. 

Legacy wallets can’t support autonomous agents

Despite years of wallet innovation, the architecture remains static mainly: sign a transaction, broadcast it, repeat. Most wallets aren’t built to understand “intent,” verify that automation matches user-defined rules, or restrict activity by time, asset type or strategy. 

This rigidity creates an all-or-nothing dynamic: either you maintain manual control and miss out on fast-moving opportunities or you hand over access entirely to opaque third-party systems. For AI-powered DeFi to scale securely as it builds more utility, we need programmable, composable and verifiable infrastructure. 

Programmable permissions are the new trust layer

As smart contracts encode logic into DeFi protocols, wallet infrastructure must encode logic into user control. That means enabling session-based permissions, cryptographic verification of agent actions and the ability to revoke access in real-time.

Recent: AI and blockchain — A match made in heaven

With these features in place, users can delegate trading, rebalancing or strategy execution without giving up complete control. This approach doesn’t just mitigate risk — it expands access. Advanced DeFi strategies could become accessible to users without technical knowledge and managed securely by agents operating within verifiable constraints. 

Programmable infrastructure makes DeFi scalable

Programmable wallet infrastructure doesn’t just make DeFi safer — it makes it scalable. Fragmentation across chains and protocols has long been a barrier to automated strategies. A universal keystore protocol that syncs permissions across networks can streamline crosschain delegation and open the door for interoperable agent ecosystems. 

As institutional interest in DeFi grows, secure automation will be non-negotiable. Most firms won’t allow AI agents to interact with capital without verifiable guardrails. Just as zero-knowledge proofs are becoming essential to privacy and compliance, programmable wallet permissions may become standard for agent-based security. 

The future of DeFi

Some may argue that AI can’t be trusted with financial autonomy, but traditional markets have already adopted algorithmic trading and black box automation. DeFi isn’t immune — it’s simply unprepared. 

If crypto is to maintain its transparency and user sovereignty principles, it must build infrastructure that keeps AI agents in check. That starts with rebuilding wallets as interfaces and operating systems for the autonomous, multichain economy. 

DeFi is on the edge of an automation revolution. The question isn’t whether agents will participate. Whether we give them the rails, they need to act in service of users, not in spite of them.

Opinion by: Sean Li, co-founder of Magic Labs.

This article is for general information purposes and is not intended to be and should not be taken as legal or investment advice. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed here are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.

Key points:

Bitcoin analysis identifies the all-important price point to hold into the weekly close as all-time highs loom.

Liquidity is tightly clustered around current spot price, with $106,000 the likely next battleground.

Some traders are expecting the bid to enter price discovery to fail.

Bitcoin (BTC) preserved giant gains into the May 11 weekly close as analysis flagged the key level to hold next.

BTC/USD 1-hour chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView

Analysis: BTC price can “kickstart the breakout process”

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView showed weekend upside volatility, delivering new multimonth highs of nearly $105,000.

A lack of liquidity during “out of hours” trading contributed to the move, which once more came on the back of positive rumors over a US-China trade deal.

$BTC
almost tagging $105K off again headlines

markets will want to see fruition of Trumps comments regarding a path forward with trade between US & China

Shipping data does already suggest insiders know hence container volume has briefly picked up again pic.twitter.com/AijqalylwS

— Skew Δ (@52kskew) May 10, 2025

Now, popular trader and analyst Rekt Capital confirmed that Bitcoin could even kickstart a return to all-time highs and price discovery.

The all-important weekly close level to flip to support, he said, lay at around $104,500.

“Can Bitcoin do it? Can Bitcoin Weekly Close above the Range High of its recently reclaimed Re-Accumulation Range to kickstart the breakout process?” he queried in a post on X alongside an explanatory chart.

“Bitcoin is on the cusp of beginning Price Discovery Uptrend 2.”BTC/USD 1-week chart. Source: Rekt Capital/X

An additional update calculated the current Bitcoin bull market as 85.5% complete, yet with the most erratic upswings still to come.

#BTC Bull Market Progress:

▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓░░ 85.5%

(Progress will speed up on Parabolic advances)$BTC #Crypto #Bitcoin pic.twitter.com/Qe88NVmo2z

— Rekt Capital (@rektcapital) May 9, 2025

A look at the latest exchange order book data from monitoring resource CoinGlass showed a large cloud of asks clustered around the area immediately below $106,000 at the time of writing.

Bids were laddered down to $102,000, creating a thickening band of liquidity around spot price into the weekly close.

BTC liquidation heatmap. Source: CoinGlass

Bitcoin can still retrace “entire move”

Some market participants remained bearish on short timeframes.

Related: Is Bitcoin about to go parabolic? BTC price targets include $160K next

On X, popular trader HTL-NL argued that the current push toward all-time highs would end as a “fakeout” to trap late longs.

“Will $BTC close/open the week remaining within the range, will it do a ‘fake out (UTAD)’ or was this really a reaccumulation range as many want to believe,” he wrote on the day. 

“To be honest, although I still favour the first 2 options based on M/Q charts, it being reaccumulation is not impossible.”BTC/USDT 1-hour chart. Source: HTL-NL/X

Another voice of caution, one all too familiar in Bitcoin trading circles, came in the form of fellow trader Il Capo of Crypto.

In his latest X updates, the pseudonymous commentator warned that BTC/USD could correct to the extent that its entire rebound disappears.

“This is the time to scale out, not in,” he argued on May 10. 

“Strong resistances are being tested, and if this is just a correction of the downtrend since January, the entire move could eventually be fully reversed.”

Il Capo of Crypto originally gained notoriety for his $12,000 BTC price targets at the start of the bull market in 2023.

This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision.