Standard Chartered Reaffirms $40K Ethereum Price Target

Price Disconnected From Fundamentals, Bank Says

Standard Chartered is not backing away from its long-term $40,000 Ethereum price target, even as $ETH trades near $2,000 and significantly trails Bitcoin in year-to-date performance.

Geoffrey Kendrick, the bank's digital assets research head, used a Thursday note to reaffirm targets of $4,000 for ETH by year-end 2026 and $40,000 by the end of 2030, arguing that the Ethereum blockchain and its token have come apart, with transaction counts and the value locked in its applications sitting near record highs while the token's price has shed roughly 57% from its August peak.

The analysts argued that ETH's current price does not reflect the increasing number of transactions on the network, nor the value of digital assets deposited into decentralized finance (DeFi) applications. Stablecoins alone account for 33% of all Ethereum transactions so far this year.

ETH has changed hands near $2,000, a 60% decline from August's peak of nearly $5,000, while Bitcoin has pulled back a comparatively modest 42% from its October all-time high of $126,000. Standard Chartered believes the gap is unjustified.

Stablecoins, RWAs, and the Road to $40,000

Standard Chartered estimates the stablecoin market capitalization will climb nearly sixfold to $2 trillion by the end of 2028 from around $321 billion today, with roughly 54% of all stablecoins currently sitting on the Ethereum network. Ethereum also accounts for about 62% of the global tokenized real-world asset (RWA) market.

The bank said: "If RWAs multiply by 50x over the next few years as we expect, the importance of this sector to Ethereum is set to increase dramatically."

The analysts reiterated their year-end price target of $4,000, while penciling in $40,000 for the end of the decade, a move they said would bring the ETH/BTC ratio back to 0.08, a level not seen since the 2021 bull cycle, at which point Bitcoin would be worth $500,000.

To frame the disconnect between price and fundamentals, Kendrick drew parallels to Jeff Bezos watching Amazon's stock crater during the 2001 dot-com bust while the underlying business kept improving. Amazon shares have since climbed roughly 1,000-fold. "ETH will catch up to the internal metrics, it is just a matter of time," Kendrick wrote.

Standard Chartered also sees potential for DeFi activity on Ethereum to be legitimized for institutions through the passage of clearer legislation, with digital assets representing real-world commodities, stocks, and bonds set to move on-chain, further benefiting the network's existing dominance.

Not everyone shares the bank's conviction. Polymarket bettors currently price a 54% probability of ETH closing below $1,500 this year, a bet backed by $6.4 million in trade volume. Short-term sentiment remains cautious even as longer-term institutional analysis points in the opposite direction.

Sources:
Decrypt: Standard Chartered Reaffirms $40K Ethereum Price Target Due to DeFi Dominance
CoinDesk: Standard Chartered Backs $4,000 Ether Price Forecast
Yahoo Finance: Standard Chartered Reaffirms $40K Ethereum Price Target