Standard Chartered's top digital assets analyst says Ethereum could deliver nearly three times the relative returns of Bitcoin by 2030, driven by institutional adoption.
Bitcoin at $500,000 gets the attention. But the real story in Standard Chartered's latest crypto outlook is what happens to Ethereum. Geoff Kendrick, the bank's Global Head of Digital Assets Research, laid out a striking pair of price targets during a recent appearance on the Milk Road podcast: $500,000 for Bitcoin and $40,000 for Ethereum by the end of the decade. The headline number for Bitcoin sounds enormous, yet it represents roughly a 7.5x gain from current levels near $66,400. Ethereum, trading around $2,034 at the time of his comments, would need to climb 20x to hit his target. That gap in potential returns is where things get interesting for anyone allocating capital across digital assets.
Kendrick pointed to the ETH/BTC ratio as a gauge worth tracking. It currently sits near 0.03, but his near-term outlook has it moving toward 0.04, a signal that Ethereum would be gaining ground against Bitcoin in relative terms. A more immediate checkpoint he offered: if Bitcoin reclaims $100,000 by the end of 2026, Ethereum should be trading around $4,000. That would represent roughly 50% upside for Bitcoin and nearly 95% for Ethereum from where both assets currently stand. The asymmetry is hard to ignore.
Part of the thesis rests on where institutional money actually lands first. Major banks and asset managers tend to build their initial blockchain products on Ethereum before expanding to other networks. BlackRock followed exactly this path, launching tokenized fund products on Ethereum before exploring broader multichain strategies. Kendrick described this as the "first phase" of real-world institutional adoption, one that plays out primarily on Ethereum even as activity eventually spreads to competing chains. The implication is straightforward: as more financial institutions follow the same playbook, demand for Ethereum's network builds steadily, and that demand feeds directly into token value.
Network Activity as a Price Catalyst
Beyond institutional adoption, Kendrick highlighted raw network usage as a driver. Rising transaction fees on Ethereum-based applications serve as a proxy for demand. The growth of stablecoins, decentralized finance protocols, and tokenized real-world assets all contribute to increased on-chain activity, and that activity has a direct mechanical relationship with Ethereum's price. More usage means more ETH burned through fee mechanisms, tightening supply while demand grows. It is a dynamic that has played out before during periods of high DeFi activity, and Kendrick expects it to intensify through the rest of the decade.
The broader macro backdrop also matters. Bitcoin has already attracted significant institutional inflows through spot ETFs approved in early 2024, with BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin Trust alone accumulating billions in assets within months of launching. Ethereum's own spot ETF products received regulatory approval in mid-2024, opening a similar pathway for traditional capital to access the asset. That dual-channel structure, institutional blockchain development plus regulated investment vehicles, creates two distinct demand sources that Kendrick expects to reinforce each other.
There are risks, of course. Ethereum faces growing competition from faster, cheaper chains like Solana and Avalanche that are aggressively courting developers and users. Regulatory uncertainty remains a factor, particularly around the classification of tokens and decentralized protocols. And Standard Chartered has not released a formal research note tied to these specific figures, so Kendrick's comments represent his personal outlook rather than the bank's official published forecast.
Still, the underlying logic has weight. Ethereum hosts the largest ecosystem of decentralized applications, handles the majority of stablecoin settlements, and continues to attract the first wave of institutional blockchain projects. If that position holds and network activity grows as tokenization expands, the path to outsized returns relative to Bitcoin becomes plausible, even without dramatic technological breakthroughs. For investors weighing allocations between the two dominant crypto assets, Kendrick's framework offers a clear lens: Bitcoin may be the safer bet for steady appreciation, but Ethereum carries the higher ceiling if institutional adoption unfolds as traditional finance currently seems to be betting.
