Ethereum's price poised to align with strong fundamental metrics, Standard Chartered maintains
Despite ETH trading 57% beneath its 2025 high and experiencing negative fund flows, Standard Chartered maintains optimistic Ether price projections, pointing to robust network fundamentals.
Despite Ether (ETH) trading significantly below its previous year's peak prices, Standard Chartered maintains that Ethereum's network activity continues hovering near all-time high levels, suggesting the divergence between actual usage and market price may ultimately close.
A Thursday analysis from Standard Chartered's digital assets research division shows that Ethereum's core metrics, such as transaction volumes and total value locked measured in ETH terms, continue to track near peak levels. According to Coingecko data, ETH has declined approximately 57% from its August 2025 zenith above $4,800 to trade below $2,000 at press time.
Geoff Kendrick, StanChart's global head of digital assets research, reiterated the firm's price projections of $4,000 by the conclusion of 2026 and $40,000 by 2030, which would represent a restoration of the ETH/BTC ratio to its 2021 peaks around 0.08.
This position emerges amid ongoing debate among market participants regarding whether Ethereum's increasing supremacy in stablecoins and tokenized real-world assets will ultimately deliver stronger returns for ETH holders, notwithstanding continuing ETF outflows and disappointing price action.
Drawing a parallel to Amazon during the dot-com crash, Kendrick suggested that "everything inside the company was going the right way" despite the stock price experiencing a severe decline.
Bitwise's senior research associate Europe, Max Shannon, endorsed Standard Chartered's Amazon comparison, explaining to Cointelegraph that it pertains to Ethereum's "lack of narrative" and "lack of value accrual from cheap layer-1 and later-2 transactions."
Shannon noted that value accrual has potential for enhancement as onchain assets and their velocity expand and as network participants pay elevated gas fees for premium functionalities such as zero-knowledge transactions, pre-confirmations, maximal extractable value, and substantial institutional trades.
Ethereum serves as primary settlement layer for stablecoins and RWAs
The analysis emphasizes Ethereum's position as the primary settlement infrastructure for stablecoins and tokenized real-world assets, forecasting that stablecoin market capitalization will experience sixfold growth to approximately $2 trillion by 2028 and tokenized non-stablecoin assets will undergo 50-fold expansion to a comparable size, with Ethereum presently accommodating roughly half to two-thirds of each sector.
Daily transactions on Ethereum hit an unprecedented peak exceeding 3.6 million on April 28 and have subsequently declined to approximately 2.2 million on Thursday, per Etherscan data. Total value locked in decentralized finance has fallen from roughly $97 billion in August to $41.65 billion on May 27, based on data from DeFiLlama.
Justin d'Anethan, head of research at Arctic Digital, a crypto private markets advisory firm, shared with Cointelegraph that seeing "a traditional bank stick to their thesis" is "heartwarming," particularly given the generally disappointing market sentiment. He observed that within crypto, price tends to be "often its own narrative," while fundamental value remains "an afterthought."
Mixed signals across the market
Additional market indicators present a more complex picture. Bitmine Immersion Technologies, by far the largest public accumulator of ETH, presently holding over 5,300,000 ETH, reinforced its supercycle expectations this week, referencing Wall Street's appetite for tokenization and artificial intelligence-powered agents.
This bullish sentiment stands in stark contrast to a series of exits from the Ethereum Foundation and public doubt expressed by certain long-standing Ethereum observers regarding how much of the network's expansion will eventually benefit ETH token holders directly.
US spot ETH exchange-traded funds contribute an additional dimension to the overall situation. According to Farside ETH ETF data, the products recorded a $67.1 million net outflow on May 27, representing 11 consecutive days of redemptions, despite experiencing more robust inflow periods earlier in the year.
D'Anethan noted the key question centers on whether Ethereum's favorable tailwinds will exceed Bitcoin's over the long haul, highlighting that prior cycles where altcoins outperformed BTC are no longer applicable. "It'll be interesting to see where large trading firms, institutions, sovereign funds and nation-states ultimately place their bets," he said.
Shannon explained that Biwise's Factor Model reveals momentum has predominantly been fueled by Bitcoin and that roughly 80% of ETH price variation can be attributed to BTC. "Macro, equities and fundamental drivers such as active addresses have all taken a back seat," he said.