Standard Chartered: Ethereum metrics strong, price lag

Standard Chartered says that while Ether (ETH) is below last year's peak trading volume, Ethereum network activity is close to record levels, suggesting that the gap between usage and value may finally be narrowing.

Ethereum's internal metrics, including transaction counts and total value locked in ETH terms, remain close to record levels, according to a Thursday report from Standard Chartered Digital Assets Research Group. ETH has fallen 57% from a high of more than $4,800 in August 2025 to just under $2,000, according to Coingecko data.

Stanchart's global head of digital assets research, Geoff Kendrick, reaffirmed his price target of $4,000 by the end of 2026 and $40,000 by 2030, suggesting that the ETH/BTC ratio will return to its 2021 high of around 0.08.

The call comes as investors argue that Ethereum's growing dominance of statscoins and real-world assets will translate into strong returns for ETH itself, despite increasingly strong ETF flows and poor price performance.

Kendrick compared his relationship with Amazon during the dot-com bust, saying that “everything in the company was on the right track” as the stock price plummeted.

ETH price last year. Source: Koingeco

Max Shannon, Europe's senior research associate at Bitwise, agreed with Standard Chartered's Amazon analogy, telling Cointelegraph that it relates to Ethereum's “lack of narrative” and “lack of value from cheap layer-1 and layer-2 transactions.”

As onchain assets and speeds grow and users pay higher gas fees, features such as zero-knowledge transactions, pre-approvals, maximum spendable value and large institutional trades can be improved, he said.

Ethereum's main settlement layer for stablecoins and RWAs

The report projects that the capitalization of the stablecoin market will grow six-fold to $2 trillion by 2028 and that non-tokenized stablecoin assets will expand 50-fold, stablecoins and tokenized real-world assets as the main settlement layer of Ethereum, highlighting the role of Ethereum, currently hosting approximately half to two-thirds of each market.

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Transactions on Ethereum peaked at more than 3.6 million on April 28 and then dropped to around 2.2 million on Thursday, according to Etherscan. Total value fell from around $97 billion in August to $41.65 billion on May 27, according to data from DeFillama.

Ethereum transactions during the day, all the time. Source: Etherscan

Justin D'Anetan, head of research at private market consultancy Arctic Digital, told Cointelegraph that despite the overall pessimistic market sentiment, “it's exciting to see a traditional bank sticking to their research. He said that in crypto, value is “often its own narrative” and fundamental value is an “afterthought”.

Mixed signals on the market

Other markets are more volatile. Bitmine Immersion Technologies, which owns more than 5,300,000 ETH so far, has doubled its expectations from the supercycle, citing Wall Street's tokenization and artificial intelligence-powered agents.

ETH ETF costs hit 11th consecutive day. Source: Farside Investors

That optimism contrasts with the initial wave of the Ethereum Foundation and the public skepticism of some longtime Ethereum analysts about how much of the network's growth will ultimately accrue to ETH itself.

US spot ETH exchange-traded funds add another layer to the picture. Commodities posted $67.1 million in net outflows on May 27, marking the 11th straight day of outflows, after seeing strong inflows earlier in the year, according to Farside ETF data.

D'Anethan remains the question of whether the tailwind of Ethereum will exceed Bitcoin in the long term, indicating that the previous cycles in which altcoins outperform BTC will no longer hold. “It will be interesting to see where big businesses, institutions, sovereign funds and national governments ultimately place their bets,” he said.

Shannon's Biwis Factor Model shows that the trend is largely driven by Bitcoin, and roughly 80% of ETH's price variation can be explained by BTC. “Macro, equities and fundamental drivers have all taken a back seat as active addresses,” he said.

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