Standard Chartered Cuts Ethereum Price Target for 2025 by 60% to $4,000

Standard Chartered has drastically reduced its 2025 price target for Ether (ETH) from $10,000 to $4,000. The reason? The growing dominance of Ethereum layer-2 solutions like Base.

“Layer-2s, especially Base, are now extracting super profits from the Ethereum ecosystem,” explains Geoffrey Kendrick, global head of digital assets research at Standard Chartered, in his new report, “Ethereum – Midlife Crisis.” “We estimate that Base alone has extracted $50 billion in market capitalization from Ethereum.”

Why Ether is falling back

Kendrick, from Standard Chartered sees Ethereum in a difficult position: It has “commodified itself” within its Layer 2 framework. A growing share of transaction fees is bypassing Layer 1.

“The solution would be to tax Layer 2 superprofits—similar to how governments impose extra taxes on foreign mining companies. Without that, the ETH-BTC ratio will continue to decline,” he said. But Kendrick considers such a change unlikely. Ether is currently trading at around $1,900—over 60% below its all-time high of $4,878 (November 2021).

What weakens Ether

The changes of recent years—such as The Merge (the abandonment of Proof-of-Work), the Layer 2 concept, and the Dencun update—were “value-destructive,” according to Kendrick.

Base, backed by Coinbase, redirects profits (fees minus data costs) directly to its parent company. “Layer 2s reduce the ‘GDP’ on the Ethereum mainnet and reduce fees—at least in the short term,” says Kendrick. In the long term, scalability and competitive fees should secure market share.

Is there hope for ETH?

Ethereum still dominates DeFi (over 50% of staked value), stablecoins (57%), and tokenized assets (80%), but this dominance is waning.

A boost could come from tokenized real-world assets (RWAs), where Ethereum is strong, or from upgrades like Pectra 2025 that improve scaling and fees. A reform of the Ethereum Foundation, such as layer-2 taxes, could help – but according to Kendrick, is unrealistic.

Looking to the future- WHat Standard Chartered Bank representative says

Despite the subdued outlook, Kendrick expects long-term gains: Ether could rise to $7,500 in 2028-2029. However, without changes to the fee structure or positioning, Ether will lag behind Bitcoin. The ETH/BTC ratio is expected to fall to 0.015 by 2027—its lowest level since 2017. What do you think about Ethereum’s future?

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(Featured image by Jakub Zerdicki via Pexels)

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