Ethereum (ETH) Drops Below $2,000—Why Standard Chartered Still Expects $40,000 By 2030

Ethereum (ETH) has followed Bitcoin (BTC) and much of the wider crypto market lower over the past 48 hours, dropping below the key $2,000 support level and reigniting concerns among some investors that a longer bear phase could be underway. 

Even with the recent slide, Standard Chartered’s Digital Assets Research Head, Geoff Kendrick, says the bank is not backing away from its bullish long-term outlook for Ethereum.

Ethereum Price Will Catch Up

In a note to investors on Thursday, Kendrick reaffirmed Standard Chartered’s core projection for Ethereum’s performance over the next four years, including its end-2030 target of $40,000 for ETH. 

He linked the current weakness to something investors may eventually look back on as a confusing, even misleading, signal. Rather than treating the price drop as proof that the network is weakening, Kendrick argued that Ethereum’s usage metrics are continuing to improve even as the token’s market value loses ground.

To illustrate the gap between price action and underlying progress, Kendrick drew a comparison to Amazon during the 2001 dot-com bust. His argument echoes a line often attributed to Jeff Bezos: that while a company’s stock can go the wrong way, “everything inside the company” can still be moving in the right direction. 

Kendrick specifically said that Ethereum will “catch up” to those improving internal metrics and suggested that investors are effectively watching a delay between operational strength and market pricing. 

ETH Upside Signals

Standard Chartered’s view leans heavily on measurable indicators that Kendrick says support Ethereum’s position in key parts of the crypto economy. 

One of the bank’s central points is Ethereum’s role in stablecoins. Kendrick noted that 54% of all stablecoins are currently issued on the network. He also said stablecoins make up around one-third of all Ethereum transactions in 2026 year-to-date. 

Based on that momentum, Standard Chartered projects the stablecoin market cap could increase sixfold from current levels by the end of 2028.

A second major pillar of the bullish case is Ethereum’s position in tokenized real-world assets (RWAs). Kendrick said Ethereum hosts around 62% of RWAs and about 68% of active on-chain loans. 

He projected that the non-stablecoin RWA sector could grow about 50 times to reach $2 trillion by the end of 2028. For Standard Chartered, tokenized RWAs are likely to expand in a way that brings Ethereum a significant share of the activity. 

Kendrick’s projections suggest Ethereum could still capture roughly half to two-thirds of both tokenized assets and the related category of growth, with Ethereum hosting an estimated 50% to 65% of those segments.

Kendrick’s analysis keeps the forecast unchanged: ETH at $4,000 by the end of 2026 and then $40,000 by the end of 2030. In the same reaffirmation, Standard Chartered lays out an extended path through the intervening years, projecting $10,000 by end-2027, $18,000 by end-2028, and ultimately $40,000 by end-2030.

At the time of writing, ETH was trading at $1,991, having retraced by 5% in the weekly timeframe. This means that the altcoin is now trading 59% below its all-time high of $4,964, reached last year. 

Featured image created with OpenArt; chart from TradingView.com