- Standard Chartered Bank has dramatically revised its Ethereum price forecast for 2025 down to US$4k from the previous US$10k, with Global Head of Digital Assets Research Geoff Kendrick citing Ethereum’s “structural decline”.
- Layer-2 solutions like Coinbase’s Base network are reportedly extracting value from Ethereum’s ecosystem, with Kendrick estimating that Base alone has removed approximately US$50 billion from ETH’s market cap.
- Despite market uncertainty around Trump’s tariffs, Kendrick maintains an optimistic Bitcoin outlook, predicting BTC will reach US$200k by the end of 2025 and eventually US$500k in coming years.
A green day for crypto: most major assets are seeing gains, with Binance coin BNB up the most over the past 24 hours, an impressive 4.75%.
That is closely followed by Tron (TRX) with 4%, while Ethereum (ETH) gained 2%, and XRP and Bitcoin (BTC) just over 1%.
However, with US$1,928 (AU$3,021) per ETH, the second-largest crypto is still miles away from its all-time high.
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The coin reached US$4,891 (AU$7,666) in November 2021, and is down by 60% since then and almost 52% from a December 2024 high.
Standard Chartered Revises ETH Target from $10k to $4k
And 2025 could shape up to be another difficult year for Ether. Standard Chartered has just revised their forecast, down to US$4k (AU$6.26k) – the bank had previously anticipated US$10k (AU$15.66k) for ETH in 2025, a 60% markdown.
The bank’s global head of Digital Assets Research, Geoff Kendrick, said they “expect ETH to continue its structural decline”.
As part of the Dencun upgrade Ethereum has seen lower fees and “higher net issuance”.
Paired with layer-2s taking a chunk of Ethereum’s “GDP”, the second-largest blockchain has suffered a hit to its market cap.
Layer 2 blockchains were meant to improve ETH scalability, but we estimate that Base (a key layer 2) has removed USD 50bn from ETH’s market cap.
Geoff Kendrick, Standard CharteredWorse yet, Coinbase’s Base network for example is “passing all the profit (fee revenue minus data recording fees) it extracts to Coinbase, its corporate owner”, Kendrick added.
Bitcoin Still on Track to Hit $200k This Year, Kendrick Believes
Regarding Bitcoin’s price, Kendrick remains however more optimistic. In an interview with CNBC in late February he said they believe BTC will go to US$200k (AU$313.4k) by the end of 2025 and to US$500 (AU$783.5k) in the coming years.
That prognosis is despite general market uncertainty around Trump’s tariffs and reciprocal tariffs by other countries, as “markets don’t like uncertainty”, said Kendrick.
Related: Casa Co-Founder Advocates for Burning Lost Bitcoins to Protect Network Integrity
Macro-analyst Michaël van de Poppe meanwhile said on Twitter that traders should focus on the next US FED meeting. While inflation is tracking in the right direction he’s not expecting rate cuts but believes “the forward-looking picture of the FED is the most important”.
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