Standard Chartered likens Ethereum to Amazon in 2001

Standard Chartered compared Ethereum to Amazon during the 2001 dot‑com downturn in a report shared Thursday. Geoffrey Kendrick, the bank's global head of digital assets research, noted ether's market price has fallen about 57% from its August 2025 peak to roughly $2,000 while the bank maintained price targets of $4,000 by end‑2026 and $40,000 by end‑2030.

The report notes transaction counts and total value locked (TVL), measured in ETH, are near all‑time highs even as the ETH‑to‑Bitcoin ratio declined about 37% over the same period. The report cites a 2018 Jeff Bezos quote: “The stock is not the company. And the company is not the stock. And so, as I watched the stock fall from $113 to $6, I was also watching all of our internal business metrics… every single thing about the business was getting better,” and adds that “ETH will catch up to the internal metrics, it is just a matter of time.”

A central element of the bank's analysis is Ethereum's share of stablecoins and tokenized real‑world assets (RWAs). The report projects the stablecoin market cap could expand about sixfold to roughly $2 trillion by the end of 2028 from about $321 billion today. It reports about 54% of stablecoins are currently on Ethereum, stablecoins account for about one‑third of Ethereum transactions year‑to‑date in 2026, and they represent roughly 60% of gross TVL on the network.

For tokenized non‑stablecoin RWAs, the report projects growth of about 50‑fold to $2 trillion by the end of 2028. Ethereum is reported to host roughly 62% of tokenized RWAs and about 68% of active on‑chain loans. The bank projects that rising activity in these sectors would increase transaction volumes and TVL on the network, putting upward pressure on ether prices over time.

The report highlights planned infrastructure changes, including the Ethereum Economic Zone (EEZ), described as a mechanism to move assets more freely across the Ethereum ecosystem and to improve composability between protocols. The report says the EEZ could reduce reliance on cross‑chain bridges and improve usability across Ethereum Virtual Machine‑compatible chains.

On regulation, the report notes progress on a U.S. crypto market structure bill, referred to in some drafts as the Clarity Act, and states that clearer rules could support growth in decentralized finance and on‑chain activity. Standard Chartered also reiterated a forecast that the ETH‑BTC ratio could recover toward the 2021 highs near 0.08 by the end of the decade.

Total value locked (TVL) measures assets held in decentralized finance protocols. Stablecoins are tokens pegged to fiat currencies. Real‑world assets are tokenized versions of traditional assets such as bonds, loans or property.