Standard Chartered Keeps $40,000 ETH Target After Drop

Standard Chartered reiterated its $40,000 end-2030 Ethereum target and a $4,000 end-2026 call in a client research note as ETH slipped below $2,000 for the first time since late March.

Geoff Kendrick, the bank’s global head of digital assets research, compared the token’s price slump to Amazon’s share-price decline after the 2001 tech crash. He cited Jeff Bezos’ 2018 remark: “The stock is not the company. And the company is not the stock.”

Kendrick noted several on-chain measures remain strong even as the market price falls. Transaction counts and total value locked in ETH terms sit near all-time highs, while ETH has dropped about 57% from an August 2025 peak of $4,946 to trade under $2,000.

Market flows show differing behavior by investor type. The ETH/BTC ratio fell to roughly 0.027, a five-year low. On-chain analytics provider Santiment flagged a wave of retail “buy the dip” orders once the $2,000 level broke and warned that retail enthusiasm can be a contrarian indicator, writing, “Retail has erupted with ‘buy the dip’ calls toward ETH as a result of this drop below a key psychological support level. This typically means the price may have a bit further to fall, due to the crowd (which usually gets calls wrong) being too optimistic.”

Prediction markets and derivatives reflect elevated downside expectations and crowded short exposure. The Polymarket market prices a 54% probability that ETH will close below $1,500 this year, with about $6.4 million in trade volume. Rising open interest and positive funding rates create roughly $2 billion of short-squeeze exposure, a risk that would increase if ETH reclaims the $2,000 area.

Kendrick set out projections for broader on-chain markets that inform Standard Chartered’s calls. He expects stablecoin market capitalization to increase about sixfold by the end of 2028 and anticipates tokenized real-world assets to expand about fiftyfold over the same period. The note assumes Ethereum could host between 50% and 65% of both stablecoins and tokenized assets.

Not all market participants agree that rising network activity will raise ETH prices. David Hoffman, co-founder of Bankless, has argued that value may accrue more to decentralized applications and Layer 2 networks than to the Ethereum token itself.

Standard Chartered’s targets and the contrasting market signals outline competing paths for ETH: the bank’s view is driven by its projected growth in stablecoins and tokenized assets, while short positioning, retail buying patterns and differing views on value capture point to alternative near-term outcomes.