Key takeaways:
- Standard Chartered remains bullish on Ethereum despite price declines.
- The network’s fundamentals – activity and TVL – remain close to records.
- The bank forecasts ETH to increase to USD 4,000 in 2026 and even USD 40,000 in 2030.
- Stablecoins and asset tokenization are expected to be the key drivers of growth.
Ethereum’s fundamentals are stronger than the price
To better illustrate the situation, Standard Chartered compares Ethereum to Amazon during the burst of the dot-com bubble. At that time, despite the falling share price, the company’s fundamentals were dynamically improving. Jeff Bezos’ famous words that “the stock price was falling, but the company was growing great” apply today to ETH’s current situation.
The bank maintains its long-term forecasts for Ethereum:
- approximately USD 4,000 by the end of 2026,
- up to USD 40,000 by 2030.
The implementation of such a scenario would mean a return of the ETH/BTC relationship to the levels of 2021, when Ethereum was relatively much stronger compared to Bitcoin.
Stablecoins and tokenization will drive growth
Standard Chartered’s optimism is mainly based on two sectors: stablecoins and real asset tokenization (RWA).
Forecasts assume:
- 6-fold growth of the stablecoin market by 2028,
- as much as a 50-fold increase in the market for tokenized assets at the same time.
Ethereum already dominates in both of these areas, with a 50% to 65% share, making it a major beneficiary of these trends.
According to analysts, the current weakness in the ETH price is more of a lag on fundamentals than a signal of structural weakness. If ecosystem development continues at its current pace, the market may eventually catch up with on-chain data.
Currently, one ether costs just over USD 2,000, which means a price jump of a symbolic 0.1% per day and a drop of 5% for a week.
However, interesting things are happening in the background. Ethereum whales with at least 100,000 ETH accumulated 17.41 million ETH, which is a 9-week high representing 22% of the total supply. The largest ones bought ether when its price dropped.
However, there are still potential declines ahead. If ether closes the weekly candle below USD 1,850, an acceleration of declines becomes highly likely. From a purely technical point of view, the rate could then drop to around USD 1,560 or even USD 1,070.
