The financial company, Standard Chartered, once again defended one of the most aggressive projections for Ethereum in the cryptocurrency market: that ETH will reach $40,000 towards the end of 2030. The estimate was reiterated by Geoff Kendrick, global head of digital asset research at the bank, just when the cryptocurrency is going through one of its weakest moments in the last year and lost the $2,000 level again.
The bank, in a note sent to his clients, also reaffirmed its intermediate goal of $4,000 for ETH by the end of 2026. The projection is based on the idea that the network’s fundamental metrics remain solid despite the deterioration of the market. The number of transactions on Ethereum and the total value locked (TVL) in decentralized applications remain near all-time highs measured in ETH. This comes even after the cryptocurrency accumulated a drop of approximately 59% from the record of $4,880 reached in August 2025.
The decline has not only been against the dollar. Ethereum also lost strength against bitcoin. The ETH/BTC ratio fell to levels close to 0.027, lows not seen in five years. For Standard Chartered, this relative weakness could be reversed if the ecosystem manages to capitalize on the expected growth in sectors such as stablecoins and the tokenization of real-world assets.
The financial institution considers that the stablecoin market could multiply its capitalization by six before 2028. At the same time, projects that real-world tokenized assets will grow up to 50 times in that same period. The bank estimates that Ethereum will continue to dominate between 50% and 65% of both sectors, which would make the network the main infrastructure for that growth. Currently, these segments already represent more than half of the value locked within the Ethereum ecosystem.
The fall in the price of the asset did not change the vision of the British bank. Kendrick maintained that he would be going through a situation similar to what Amazon experienced during the collapse of the dotcom bubble in 2001. At that time, the shares of the company founded by Jeff Bezos went from $113 to just $6, while the business continued to grow internally. Over the years, and adjusted for the stock split, Amazon ended up multiplying approximately 1,000 times since that crash. However, the market still seems far from sharing that enthusiasm.
The data from the analysis firm Santimentshow that, after the break of the $2,000 support, small investors began to launch massive orders to “buy the dip.” The analysis firm warned that this behavior historically is usually a negative signal short-term, as it reflects excess retail optimism before new falls. According to the platform’s analysts, the true market bottom usually comes when those buyers finally capitulate and stop trying to anticipate the rebound.
To explain the above, we have the following graph. The white line corresponds to the price of ETH. For their part, the green bars represent the volume of positive comments about the asset on social networks, while the red bars indicate negative mentions. The yellow line reflects the ratio between bullish and bearish sentiment. When this line exceeds the area outlined in red, known as the “FOMO Zone”, the market enters a level of excessive optimism based on social media activity. In contrast, when it descends towards the lower green zone, called the “FUD Zone”, the dominant sentiment is fear among market participants.
While the retail public bought, institutional investors went in the opposite direction. Larger flows continued to exit or bet on more bearish pressure. That perception also remained reflected in Polymarketwhere prediction market users assign (at the time of this note) a 57% probability for ETH to end the year below $1,500. That bet already moves more than 6.4 million dollars in volume.
At the same time, the derivatives market shows mixed signals. He open interest in ether futures rose to a record 16.39 million ETH, equivalent to about $32.61 billion, even as the price continued to fall. In market analysis terms, this is often interpreted as accumulating new short positions, i.e. traders betting on further declines. Financing rates on perpetual contracts remained close to 0.0074%, according to Coinglass dataindicating that traders are not willing to pay high premiums to hold bullish positions.
Although Ethereum maintains leadership in areas such as stablecoins and asset tokenization, the market is still debating whether that growth will be enough to boost the value of ETH again. Amid bearish positions, retail purchases and optimistic projections, uncertainty continues to dominate the outlook.