Standard Chartered on Thursday reaffirmed its price targets for Ethereum: $4,000 by end of 2026 and $40,000 by 2030. The bank argues that ETH, which fell 57% from its August 2025 peak to around $2,000, is disconnected from its own network performance. The price lag, in the bank's view, is temporary.
What do Ethereum's on-chain metrics actually show?
ETH dropped about 57% from its August 2025 high above $4,800. Bitcoin, by comparison, fell 42% from its October all-time high of $126,000 to around $73,600. The gap between the two assets' drawdowns has been consistent throughout the downturn.
Network activity tells a different story. Ethereum hit an all-time high of 3.6 million daily transactions on April 28. The figure has since pulled back to around 2.2 million, but that remains above most months of 2024.
Stablecoins have been the standout signal. Year-to-date in 2026, they account for 33% of all Ethereum transactions, a record share. Total Value Locked in DeFi in dollar terms fell from $97 billion in August to $41.65 billion. Standard Chartered, however, measures TVL denominated in ETH rather than dollars, and that figure remains near record highs.
How does Standard Chartered reach $40,000?
Geoff Kendrick, the bank's global head of digital assets research, outlines four interlocking drivers behind the forecast:
- Stablecoins 6x by 2028: the market is projected to reach ~$2 trillion. Ethereum dominates stablecoin settlement, so growth in this segment directly increases transaction demand on the network.
- Tokenized real-world assets (RWA) are expected to expand 50x to a similar scale. Stocks, bonds, and commodities moving on-chain predominantly settle on Ethereum.
- The ETH/BTC ratio is forecast to return to its 2021 high of 0.08. If Bitcoin reaches $500,000 by 2030, that ratio puts ETH at exactly $40,000.
- Ethereum Economic Zone launches this summer, lowering friction for asset movement across Layer-2 networks and boosting fee revenue.
A further potential driver: legislation in the US that would allow banks and institutional funds to participate in DeFi. Standard Chartered expects this would generate a sharp and rapid increase in demand for Ethereum block space.
The Amazon analogy and what it means
To understand the bank's core argument, consider what happened to Amazon after the dot-com crash. The stock fell 94% from its peak. Jeff Bezos described the period plainly: "While the stock price was going the wrong way, everything inside the company was going the right way." The market caught up eventually.
Kendrick applies this frame directly to Ethereum. The token price does not reflect the network's actual activity level. Ethereum continues processing record volumes while the market has not repriced this accordingly.
Max Shannon, senior research associate at Bitwise, added context on the technical side. The 2024 Dencun upgrade made Layer-2 transactions significantly cheaper. As a result, less ETH is burned per transaction and deflationary pressure has weakened. Shannon believes that large institutional transactions with higher fees, including zero-knowledge operations, pre-confirmation trades, and large RWA settlements, will reverse this dynamic over time.
Where the thesis gets complicated
Justin d'Anethan of Arctic Digital raised a counterpoint: in crypto, price is often its own narrative. When an asset falls, that decline itself shapes sentiment and influences how large players interpret even strong on-chain data.
ETF flows support the skepticism. US spot Ethereum ETFs recorded $67.1 million in net outflows on May 27, the 11th consecutive day of withdrawals. The institutional investors Standard Chartered cites as future growth drivers are currently reducing their positions.
Shannon at Bitwise added another data point: roughly 80% of ETH price variation can be explained by Bitcoin's movement. If BTC does not rally toward $500,000 by 2030, the ETH/BTC ratio thesis breaks down.
Prediction market Myriad currently gives a 65% probability that ETH falls to $1,500 before it rises to $3,000.
What would need to happen for the forecast to work?
Standard Chartered names three specific near-term catalysts. First, the Ethereum Economic Zone launching this summer. If Layer-2 interoperability standards become unified, both activity and fees should rise. Second, US legislation that formally opens DeFi to banks and institutional funds. Third, continued RWA scaling, where each major bank tokenizing bonds adds direct demand for Ethereum block space.
Compare live rates for buying ETH across independent exchanges on Kurslog.
If none of the three catalysts materialize before the end of 2026, the $4,000 year-end target remains theoretical. Standard Chartered's bet is that all three will arrive on schedule.
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