Standard Chartered Lowers 2025 Ethereum Price Target from $10K to $4K

Financial giant Standard Chartered has significantly lowered its year-end 2025 Ethereum (ETH) price target from $10,000 to $4,000 as it expects the asset’s decline to continue. This prediction comes as Ethereum’s market value continues to struggle even though the crypto market recorded massive gains months ago.

While Ethereum still leads in several metrics—holding over 50% of total value locked in decentralized finance (DeFi) assets, 57% of stablecoins, and 80% of tokenized assets—its dominance has been shrinking for some time. Data from the price tracking platform Coingecko shows that the asset is down by over 24% in the last 30 days and has declined 46.5% over the past year.

In addition, ETH is currently trading at around $1,900, over 60% down from its all-time high of approximately $4,878 in November 2021.

Analyst Outlines Factors Behind Price Outlook

Standard Chartered analyst Geoffrey Kendrick cited several factors that contributed to this price outlook, including the rise of Base, a Layer-2 blockchain developed by Coinbase. The research estimates that Base alone has drained approximately $50 billion in value from Ethereum’s market cap by retaining 80% of its fee revenue, benefiting Coinbase more than the Ethereum network. 

Furthermore, the analyst highlighted Ethereum’s upgrades over the years, including the 2022 merge to proof-of-stake and the 2024 Dencun update. He further stated that these changes seemed necessary because they improved scalability and reduced fees. However, they most likely contributed to ETH’s value decline as the upgrades enabled layer-2 networks to dominate revenue generation.

Will Ethereum Regain Momentum?

Several factors will play a role in ETH’s regaining momentum. According to Kendrick, the continued expansion of tokenized real-world assets (RWAs), where Ethereum holds an 80% market share, could boost demand for the network.  Additionally, upcoming technical upgrades, such as Pectra in 2025, may improve scalability and fee dynamics.

Another potential solution would be for the Ethereum Foundation to implement economic reforms, such as taxing layer-2 networks that benefit from its infrastructure. However, Kendrick sees this as an unlikely development.

“The solution would be to tax layer-2 super-profits in the same way governments sometimes charge super taxes for foreign-owned mining companies that extract excess profits. Unless that happens, ETH-BTC will keep going down”, Kendrick stated.

Despite lowering its near-term outlook, Kendrick still expects ETH to appreciate over time, forecasting a price of $7,500 by 2028-2029.

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