Standard Chartered Bank: AAVE could surge 50-fold to $3,500 by end-2030
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Standard Chartered Bank: AAVE could surge 50-fold to $3,500 by end-2030
It also predicts BTC will reach $500,000—has it become trendy for banks to issue cryptocurrency trading recommendations?
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsAuthor: Decrypt Agent
Compiled by: TechFlow
TechFlow Introduction: Standard Chartered has initiated coverage of AAVE with a year-end 2030 target price of $3,500—nearly a 50-fold increase from its current price of approximately $70. Aave recently endured the April KelpDAO incident, which halved its deposits; it is now in the early stages of recovery. Standard Chartered’s core thesis is that the total value locked (TVL) in decentralized finance (DeFi) will grow 37-fold by 2030, and Aave—the largest DeFi lending protocol—will benefit directly. The same report also forecasts Bitcoin at $500,000 and Ethereum at $40,000 by 2030.
Standard Chartered analysts are placing a major bet on Aave. As one of the largest DeFi lending platforms, Standard Chartered projects that Aave’s token could surge nearly 50-fold from current levels by end-2030. This forecast comes just two months after Aave was impacted by a major ecosystem event.
Geoff Kendrick, Standard Chartered’s Global Head of Digital Asset Research, initiated coverage of AAVE in a research note released Wednesday, assigning it a year-end 2030 target price of $3,500. At the time of publication, AAVE was trading around $70.
Standard Chartered expects the token to rise in stages: reaching $180 by year-end 2024, then climbing to $600, $1,200, and $2,200 over the following three years, ultimately hitting $3,500 by end-2030.
AAVE’s all-time high exceeded $661 in 2021—a level it has not approached since, though it rebounded to nearly $400 near the end of 2024 following Donald Trump’s U.S. election victory.
KelpDAO Incident Fallout Still Being Absorbed
This optimistic outlook follows a difficult period for Aave. In April, smaller DeFi platform KelpDAO suffered a $291 million hack, triggering liquidity stress across the ecosystem and prompting panic-driven withdrawals by many DeFi users.
As a result, platform deposits plunged from $44 billion to $23 billion; active loans fell from roughly $18 billion to $9.5 billion. Standard Chartered notes that Aave’s market share in lending dropped from an average of 59% pre-incident to 38%.
Standard Chartered’s Core Thesis: 37-Fold Growth in DeFi Assets
Standard Chartered believes the impact of this shock has largely run its course. Aave founder Stani Kulechov has introduced a new risk management framework, and deposits have shown signs of recovery since June.
However, Standard Chartered’s larger bet rests on broader DeFi trends: the bank forecasts that the value of tokenized assets deployed in DeFi will grow 37-fold by 2030, reaching $2.7 trillion. Key drivers include stablecoin expansion, tokenized real-world assets (RWAs) issued by traditional financial institutions, and rising crypto asset prices.
Aave’s revenue primarily stems from lending spreads—the difference between interest paid to depositors and interest charged to borrowers. Standard Chartered expects Aave’s revenue—and consequently its token price—to closely track growth in DeFi TVL.
Risk: Institutional Lending Business Unproven
That said, this forecast carries substantial uncertainty. Standard Chartered itself acknowledges that Aave Horizon—the protocol’s institutional lending division—is “feasible but unproven,” hinging critically on whether it can establish scalable partnerships with traditional financial institutions—a milestone yet to be achieved.
Digital asset prices remain highly volatile. On Wednesday, Bitcoin briefly hit a 21-month low, with other major assets declining in tandem. Following the report’s release, AAVE spiked above $77 but subsequently gave back most of those gains. However, as Bitcoin began rebounding, AAVE climbed back above $79—recording an intraday gain of nearly 9%.
In the same report, Standard Chartered also issued additional forecasts: Ethereum’s year-end 2030 target price of $40,000 (trading at $1,614 at time of writing), and Bitcoin’s year-end 2030 target price of $500,000 (currently $60,831).
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