Ethereum Price Jumps Back Above $3,000 After Fusaka Upgrade – Is a Bigger ETH Rally Coming in December 2025?

Published: December 3, 2025

Ethereum has reclaimed the psychologically important $3,000 level just as its much‑anticipated Fusaka network upgrade goes live — and analysts are suddenly divided on whether ETH’s next big move is up toward $5,000–$7,000 or down toward $2,400.

As of Wednesday evening (UTC), Ethereum is trading around $3,050–$3,150 on major exchanges, up roughly 4–9% over the last 24 hours depending on venue. Coinbase quotes $3,124 with a market cap near $378 billion, making ETH the second‑largest cryptocurrency with about 12% market dominance. ^[1] Macro data provider YCharts puts today’s benchmark daily level near $2,996, up about 7% from yesterday but still down almost 18% versus a year ago, underscoring how deep the recent correction has been. ^[2]

The catalyst for today’s bounce is clear: Fusaka, Ethereum’s second major hard fork of 2025, has been activated — and it directly targets scalability, data availability, and Layer‑2 fees. At the same time, crypto ETFs have flipped from heavy outflows to more than $1.1 billion in weekly inflows, signaling renewed institutional interest in both Bitcoin and Ethereum. ^[3]

Below is a detailed rundown of Ethereum’s price today, how Fusaka could reshape ETH’s fundamentals, and what the latest short‑ and long‑term price predictions are saying as of December 3, 2025.

Ethereum Price Today, 3 December 2025

Spot price & performance

Current spot price: around $3,100 per ETH on major exchanges, with Coinbase showing about $3,124 as of 18:26 UTC. ^[4]
24‑hour move: roughly +4–9% depending on data source, confirming a strong green daily candle after a sharp sell‑off at the start of December. TechStock²+1
Weekly performance: about +3–4% versus last week’s price near $3,030, meaning ETH has clawed back recent losses but is far from its November highs. ^[5]
Monthly & yearly trend: Coinbase data show ETH is still down about 15% over the past month and roughly 18% over the past year. ^[6]

Market structure & liquidity

Market cap: ~$378B. ^[7]
24h trading volume: around $27B, indicating elevated but not blow‑off‑top activity. ^[8]
All‑time high: about $4,954, reached in August 2025 — today’s price is roughly 35–40% below that peak. ^[9]

So, while this week’s bounce looks impressive on the daily chart, in the bigger picture ETH is still trading in the middle of a wide range between long‑term support near $1,500 and resistance above $4,000. ^[10]

Fusaka Upgrade Goes Live: Why It Matters for Ethereum’s Price

The Fusaka upgrade is the central narrative around Ethereum today.

What Fusaka actually changes

According to Ethereum’s own documentation and detailed breakdowns from CoinGecko and CoinCentral, Fusaka is a combined consensus‑plus‑execution layer hard fork (Fulu + Osaka) that activated on mainnet on December 3, 2025, at slot 13,164,544. ^[11]

Key changes include:

PeerDAS (Peer Data Availability Sampling)
- Validators can now verify data by sampling small slices of blob data instead of downloading everything.
- This cuts validator bandwidth and storage requirements by around 80–85%, and lets the network safely scale blob throughput by up to 8× over time. ^[12]
Much higher data capacity & gas limits
- Fusaka significantly raises the effective block gas limit (around 60M gas vs ~36M before), so more transactions can be settled on‑chain per block. ^[13]
- It lays the groundwork for two follow‑up parameter tweaks later in December and early 2026 that further boost blob throughput and reduce Layer‑2 costs. ^[14]
Lower Layer‑2 fees
- With more blob space and cheaper data availability, rollups such as Arbitrum, Optimism and Base are expected to see 40–60% fee reductions over time, according to developer estimates. ^[15]
Institutional‑friendly features
- Fusaka also adds native support for passkey‑style authentication (via secp256r1 signatures), which allows wallet experiences without seed phrases — a big plus for institutions and mainstream users. ^[16]

Crypto.news notes that Ethereum’s price pushed decisively back above $3,000 as Fusaka activated, but also warns that ETH still needs to break above a cluster of moving averages to confirm a sustained uptrend. ^[17]

Market narrative: “Most important throughput upgrade since EIP‑4844”

Commentators across Coinbase’s news feed and 99Bitcoins describe Fusaka as Ethereum’s biggest throughput and fee‑related milestone since EIP‑4844 (“proto‑danksharding”), reinforcing ETH’s positioning as the settlement layer for DeFi and on‑chain finance. ^[18]

This is why many analysts are framing today’s price action as a referendum on Fusaka: if the upgrade meaningfully reduces rollup costs and drives usage, it could justify higher valuations; if not, the market may fade the rally.

ETF Flows, Vanguard’s Policy Shift and the Macro Backdrop

Fusaka is not happening in a vacuum — it’s landing just as institutional money returns to crypto.

Crypto ETF inflows flip positive

The Economic Times reports that crypto investment funds saw about $1.1 billion in net inflows last week, the largest weekly total in seven weeks, reversing roughly a quarter of the $4.7 billion in outflows from the previous month. ^[19]

The US accounted for roughly $994 million of those inflows, with Canada contributing another ~$98 million.
While Bitcoin ETFs captured most of the flows, Ethereum ETFs also benefited as investors diversified across major assets. ^[20]

Vanguard & Bank of America open the door wider

A live news feed from 99Bitcoins highlights that Vanguard is now allowing its huge client base to trade spot Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs and crypto mutual funds, while Bank of America has reportedly given wealth managers the green light to recommend modest crypto allocations (up to 4% in BTC) in some portfolios. ^[21]

This combination of renewed ETF inflows and distribution via legacy giants adds a powerful tailwind to Ethereum’s medium‑term demand story — especially with an ETH‑specific US spot ETF widely expected in early 2026, as several experts quoted by Cryptonews point out. ^[22]

Short‑Term Price Analysis: Key Levels for ETH in December

Even with today’s pop above $3,000, technical analysts are far from unanimous.

Immediate support & resistance

Several high‑profile analyses converge on a few key areas:

Near‑term resistance: ~$3,100–$3,300
- Brave New Coin argues that a clean breakout above $3,100 could fuel a push toward $3,500–$5,000 if momentum and liquidity cooperate. ^[23]
- CryptoPotato notes that ETH is trading near $3,065 after bouncing from $2,800, and suggests that holding this support could open the door to $3,300 and even $3,900. ^[24]
Critical support: ~$2,800
- Multiple analysts — including those tracked by CryptoPotato, CCN and Cryptonews — frame $2,800 as the battle line. A sustained break below that area would signal that bears retain control. ^[25]

Bearish scenarios: $2,500, $2,200… even $1,500?

Recent coverage leans cautious despite today’s bounce:

A Cointelegraph/Bitget analysis, citing on‑chain MVRV data and a bearish pennant pattern, warns that ETH could slide to $2,500–$2,200 if current support fails. ^[26]
CCN’s December report stresses that ETH is already down about 43% from its August all‑time high, and that a clean break below $2,800 could eventually drag price toward $1,500, the bottom of a multi‑year trading range. ^[27]
Indonesian outlet Pintu flags a “death cross” on Ethereum’s daily chart (50‑day EMA dropping below the 200‑day EMA) and suggests that a failure to hold $2,750–$2,800 could expose ETH to $2,600–$2,400. ^[28]

In short, the bearish case hinges on $2,800: if that zone cracks decisively after the Fusaka hype fades, several models point to another 15–30% downside in December.

Bulls vs Bears: Analysts Split After the Fusaka Launch

Despite the gloomy technical warnings, not everyone is bearish. Today’s reports reveal a wide spread of outcomes for late 2025 and early 2026.

Bullish voices: $4,000–$9,000 targets

CryptoPotato and Brave New Coin both see a path where a break above $3,100–$3,300 sets up a move toward $3,900–$5,000 in the coming months, assuming support at $2,850–$2,800 holds. ^[29]
CoinCentral’s Fusaka deep‑dive points to up to 8× scalability for Layer‑2s and highlights one analyst who expects ETH could more than double from current levels once the market fully prices in cheaper rollup fees and improved data availability. ^[30]
A widely discussed Tom Lee forecast, covered by CCN, argues that ETH might briefly dip to $2,500 but ultimately has room to rally toward $7,000–$9,000 by early 2026, supported by institutional accumulation and the upgrade roadmap. ^[31]

Cautious & bearish voices: “Winter dilemma” and death‑cross warning

Cryptonews frames Ethereum’s current situation as a “winter dilemma” between $7,000 and $2,400, quoting experts who see the $3,000 monthly close as a point of equilibrium rather than a clear bullish signal. They argue that external liquidity, ETF approvals, and macro conditions will decide whether ETH surges or retests lower supports. ^[32]
Pintu’s death‑cross analysis and Bitget/Cointelegraph’s MVRV‑based scenarios both emphasize that trend momentum is still technically down, even if Fusaka and ETF flows create a strong fundamental story. ^[33]

Quant & algorithmic forecasts for December 2025

Changelly expects ETH to trade in December 2025 between roughly $3,055 and $3,673, with an average around $3,364, implying modest upside from current levels if the month finishes strong. ^[34]
CoinCodex models a range of about $3,130–$3,763 for 2025, and projects that ETH could reach around $3,450–$3,680 by mid‑December if it tracks the upper scenario. ^[35]

Taken together, these calls suggest that the “base case” among many forecasters is a grind higher toward the mid‑$3,000s, with very real risk both to the upside (if liquidity and ETFs overshoot) and to the downside (if $2,800 fails).

Long‑Term Ethereum Price Predictions to 2030 and Beyond

Beyond this month’s whipsaws, a number of platforms publish longer‑term Ethereum forecasts. These are not guarantees, but they show how different models are thinking about ETH’s potential.

2026–2030: Moderate growth in “default” scenarios

Binance’s community‑driven prediction page suggests that ETH could be worth around $3,292 in 2026 and roughly $4,002 in five years, assuming steady adoption and no catastrophic shocks. ^[36]
Kraken’s projection tool, using a simple 5% annual growth assumption, estimates ETH could reach about $3,280 in 2026 and nearly $3,988 by 2030, a moderate but persistent uptrend. ^[37]
CoinCodex’s algorithmic model is more aggressive on the high end, seeing a potential $4,575–$8,660 range by 2030, and even a path to $10,000 around 2032 in an upside scenario. ^[38]

High‑conviction bull cases: $10,000–$15,000 by 2030

A detailed analysis by YouHodler outlines a high‑price scenario where, if Ethereum maintains smart‑contract dominance, executes its full scaling roadmap, and enjoys favorable macro conditions, ETH could reach $10,000–$15,000 by 2030. In a more moderate case, it lands somewhere in the $5,000–$10,000 range. ^[39]

Of course, these projections depend heavily on network growth, regulatory clarity, competition from other Layer‑1s, and whether upgrades like Fusaka deliver meaningful user‑level improvements. None of them are investment advice or guarantees.

What Today’s Move Means for Traders and Long‑Term Holders

Putting everything together, here’s how December 3, 2025 looks for Ethereum:

Price has snapped back above $3,000, with strong daily gains but lingering monthly and yearly losses. The market is still digesting a 40% drawdown from the August all‑time high. ^[40]
Fusaka is now live, delivering a clear fundamental upgrade: cheaper rollups, higher data throughput, and more efficient validators — all of which can support Ethereum’s role as a settlement layer for DeFi and on‑chain finance if real usage follows. ^[41]
Institutional demand is thawing, with crypto ETFs flipping back to net inflows and major traditional platforms like Vanguard and Bank of America allowing more access to BTC and ETH exposure. ^[42]
Technicals are still conflicted:
- Bulls watch for a breakout above $3,100–$3,300 and see scope for $4,000–$5,000 and beyond. ^[43]
- Bears focus on $2,800 support, warning of potential slides toward $2,500–$2,200, or even the long‑term range low near $1,500 if that level fails. ^[44]
Long‑term expectations cluster around gradual appreciation, with mainstream platforms modeling ETH in the $4,000–$8,000 range by 2030 in base or optimistic scenarios, and some high‑conviction bull cases reaching $10,000+. ^[45]

For short‑term traders, that likely means heightened volatility around the Fusaka narrative and ETF headlines. For long‑term investors, the key questions are less about whether ETH trades at $2,800 or $3,300 this month, and more about:

Will Fusaka and future upgrades genuinely lower costs and attract sustained on‑chain activity?
Will Ethereum keep its lead against rival smart‑contract platforms?
How large and stable will institutional demand via ETFs become?

Final Note

This article is informational only and not financial or investment advice. Crypto assets are highly volatile and can result in total loss of capital. Always do your own research and consider your risk tolerance before buying or selling Ethereum or any other cryptocurrency.