Standard Chartered's Ethereum year-end target price halved... $10,000 → $4,000

Standard Chartered (SC) has significantly lowered its year-end target price for Ethereum (ETH), forecasting a structural decline.

According to CoinDesk on the 17th (local time), Standard Chartered stated in a report that "Ethereum's structural decline will continue" and "we are adjusting our price forecast for this year down to $4,000." The previously announced year-end target price was $10,000.

The bank analyzed that the growth of Layer 2 (L2) blockchains is the cause of Ethereum's sluggishness. The report said, "Ethereum still dominates the market in various metrics," but added that "this dominance is continuously decreasing." This explains that L2 blockchains, developed to improve the scalability of the Ethereum network, are instead having a negative impact on Ethereum. Market capitalization issues were also pointed out. SC elaborated, "In the case of Ethereum L2 Base, it has reduced Ethereum's market capitalization by $50 billion."

Jeff Kendrick, head of crypto asset research at Standard Chartered, said, "Ethereum has strong dominance in terms of security, and based on this, it is likely to maintain an 80% market share in the real-world asset (RWA) market," but added, "Unless the Ethereum Foundation takes a proactive stance, such as taxing L2 blockchains, there is little way to reverse the downward trend." He further added that the likelihood of the Ethereum Foundation taking such measures is low.

The bank also said, "Bitcoin's rise may lift the entire crypto asset market," but reiterated that "Ethereum's relative underperformance will continue." It then predicted that "the ETH/BTC ratio could fall to 0.015 by the end of 2027." This would be the lowest level since 2017.

As of 11:16 PM, Ethereum is trading at $1,893 on the Binance USDT market, up 0.67% from 24 hours ago.