Synthetix founder Kain Warwick loses $50,000 Ether price bet

Warwick took the long side at 10:1 odds and agreed to pay $50,000 if ETH missed the target. In his comments, he tied his bullish view to expectations of institutional demand and the growth of real-world asset (RWA) tokenization.

Ether finished Dec. 31 at about $2,980, according to CoinMarketCap, roughly 13.7% below where it started the year. The result was attributed in part to weak price momentum and selling that followed a major wave of liquidations across the crypto market on Oct. 10, estimated at around $19 billion. During that move, ETH fell to roughly $2,767 and then recovered gradually.

Samani referenced the outcome in a post on X, saying it was “time to pay.” Warwick acknowledged the loss and joked that since the bet was placed, ETH was still up about 50%, and he was “only eight 10x moves short” of winning. He also pointed to a new target for 2026: $10,000 per ETH.

Warwick is known as an early DeFi builder. His Synthetix project launched in 2017 under the name Havven and later rebranded as Synthetix as it shifted toward issuing and trading synthetic assets on Ethereum.

He also leads Infinex, an app positioned as a user-friendly gateway to decentralized services, with account access built around passkeys rather than seed phrases. Before DeFi, Warwick helped build the Australian payments network Blueshyft.

Price targets near $10,000 for ETH were also discussed by other market commentators in 2025. In October, Tom Lee (BitMine) and BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes talked about a roughly $10,000 scenario in an episode of the Bankless podcast.