Standard Chartered suddenly calls for long Ethereum: What’s the secret behind the $40,000 target price?

Original author：币需大白话

Original source：https://www.youtube.com/embed/uzPsrgQlPTw

Focusing on the core event of Standard Chartered Bank raising the long-term target price of Ethereum to US$40,000, this article conducts a comprehensive analysis of Ethereum’s current structural opportunities and potential risks from the perspective of institutional analysis logic, changes in the supply side of the primary market, whale movements in the secondary market, dual narratives of fundamentals, and investment strategies. Geoffrey, Head of FX and Digital Asset Research, Standard Chartered Bank Kendrick defined 2026 as the "Year of Ethereum". Although the short-term target price was lowered several times in early 2026 due to overall market weakness (from $12,000 to $7,500 to $4,000), the long-term target of $40,000 in 2030 has remained unchanged, corresponding to a potential increase of approximately 20 times, while the Bitcoin target price of $500,000 during the same period corresponds to an increase of approximately 7.5 times. Standard Chartered's bullish logic is rooted in Ethereum's structural dominance in three major tracks: first, the stablecoin settlement layer, Ethereum accounts for about 58% of the stablecoin market value, and traditional payment giants such as Visa have begun to use the Ethereum ecosystem for USDC settlement; secondly, tokenized real world assets (RWA), Ethereum accounts for about 65.5%. Market share, the total locked-up value is approximately US$12.5 billion. As asset management giants such as BlackRock move fund products onto the chain, the RWA tokenization market is expected to reach US$300 billion in 2026. Third, decentralized finance (DeFi), the total locked-up value of DeFi on the Ethereum chain has exceeded US$300 billion, accounting for approximately 57% of the entire network. At the same time, there has been a strategic turn on the supply side of the primary market: the Ethereum Foundation increased its pledged ETH holdings to approximately 46,667 pieces (approximately US$96.6 million) on April 3, 2026, gradually approaching the default of 70,000 pieces. Regarding the pledge target, the on-chain monitoring agency Arkham clearly stated that "the Ethereum Foundation has stopped selling ETH and started staking", which means that the foundation will rely on pledge proceeds to maintain operations, thus significantly reducing the selling pressure from the official secondary market. In the secondary market, Bitmine, a company associated with well-known analyst Tom Lee, once again increased its holdings of 40,000 ETH through institutional broker FalconX, with a total value of approximately US$82.07 million. The company had previously made multiple large-scale purchases in December 2025 and February 2026. The total amount of ETH in its vault has been close to 4 million, worth more than US$11 billion, and it aims to control approximately 5% of the circulating supply of ETH. On-chain data also shows that exchange ETH reserves continue to decline, while the number of addresses holding more than 10,000 ETH increases, indicating that long-term chips are quietly concentrated. However, investors also need to face multiple risks: prediction market Polymarket data shows that the possibility of Ethereum losing its status as the world's second largest cryptocurrency in 2026 has soared from 17% to more than 59%, mainly driven by the rapid growth in the market value of the two major stablecoins USDT and USDC; new generations such as Solana and Sui Layer1 blockchains continue to compete in terms of transaction speed and user experience, diverting some developers and users; although the Ethereum L2 solution solves the scalability problem, it also causes some value and users to migrate from the main chain to networks such as Arbitrum, Optimism and Base, of which Base has occupied all L2 46% of DeFi TVL; in addition, the U.S. SEC’s regulatory attitude toward DeFi protocols, global regulatory fragmentation, and the macroeconomic environment (Federal Reserve monetary policy, geopolitical risks) all pose uncertainties. From an investment strategy perspective, Standard Chartered's US$40,000 target should be viewed as a long-term narrative framework rather than a short-term trading signal. Investors can consider building positions in batches, participating in pledges to obtain an annualized rate of return of approximately 3% to 4% plus network fee sharing, and maintain continued attention to the competitive landscape. Overall, Ethereum’s structural moat in the stablecoin, RWA and DeFi fields combined with the continued inflow of institutional funds and the contraction of the supply side have formed a core logic of long-term bullishness. However, short-term prices are still affected by macro sentiment and competitive pressure, and investors should make allocation decisions based on a rational assessment of the risk-return ratio.