TechFlow news, according to CoinDesk, Standard Chartered stated in a research report released on Monday that Ethereum's (ETH) structural decline is expected to continue. The investment bank has significantly lowered its year-end 2025 price target for Ethereum from a previous $10,000 to $4,000.
The report noted that "Ethereum stands at a crossroads," and while it "remains dominant across several metrics," this dominance has been declining for some time. Layer-2 blockchains were originally designed to enhance Ethereum's scalability, but Standard Chartered estimates that Coinbase's Base has already reduced Ethereum's market capitalization by $50 billion, and this trend is expected to persist.
Geoff Kendrick, Head of Digital Asset Research at Standard Chartered, said market forces might eventually halt this structural decline, "particularly if tokenized real-world assets grow significantly," since "ETH's security dominance suggests it should retain an 80% share of this market." However, "this could only happen if the Ethereum Foundation actively changes course—such as by taxing Layer-2s," which the bank considers unlikely.
Standard Chartered forecasts that the ETH/BTC ratio will fall to 0.015 by the end of 2027, the lowest level since 2017. Nonetheless, the bank still expects Ethereum’s price to recover from its current level of around $1,900, as rising Bitcoin (BTC) prices are likely to lift all digital assets, though Ethereum’s underperformance will persist.
