Arthur Hayes Says Robinhood Chain Could Help Push Ether Toward $5,000
Hayes argues that Robinhood’s decision to build an Arbitrum-based Layer 2 that uses ETH for fees could make Ethereum easier for big financial firms to adopt and raise demand for Ether.
Overview
- Arthur Hayes made the $5,000 forecast at EastPoint: Seoul 2026 on Sept. 28 and tied the outlook to Robinhood’s new blockchain serving as a reference case for other institutions.
- Robinhood Chain launched its public mainnet on July 1 as an Arbitrum-based Layer 2 that uses ETH for gas and Ethereum blobs for data availability and has shown heavy early use.
- U.S. spot Ether ETFs recorded about $689.8 million in net inflows from Sept. 21 through Sept. 25 with BlackRock and Fidelity taking the largest shares of that capital.
- On-chain signals include a reported one-week addition of roughly 320,000 ETH to large wallets, a near 500% jump in transfers over $1 million, and about 1.61 million ETH waiting to enter staking versus 161,000 waiting to exit.
- Reaching $5,000 would require roughly an 89% rally from current levels near $2,650 and depends on sustained net buying because large transfers can reflect custodial moves and staking removes liquid supply without guaranteeing higher prices.