Standard Chartered's Geoffrey Kendrick forecast that Ethereum (ETH) could reach $40,000 by 2030 and significantly outperform Bitcoin (BTC), arguing that institutional tokenization and stablecoin expansion will drive most early activity to the Ethereum network.
Kendrick's ETH Forecast
In an interview with Milk Road's John Gillen, Kendrick — Standard Chartered's global head of digital assets research — said traditional finance firms are most likely to build on Ethereum's layer-1 chain first. He cited its unbroken uptime as a key factor for compliance-focused institutions. "It'll be very safe to say I'm going to build on Ethereum layer one, right? Because it's never gone down," he said.
Kendrick pointed to BlackRock's rollout as a model. Institutions would launch on Ethereum mainnet, then expand to other chains and layer-2 networks later. He projected the ETH/BTC ratio could rise from roughly 0.03 to 0.04 this year, with Bitcoin reaching $500,000 by 2030.
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Tokenization Growth Projections
The forecast rests heavily on tokenization trends. Kendrick said stablecoins could grow from about $300 billion to $2 trillion in the next few years, pulling money market funds on-chain alongside them.
He estimated tokenized money market funds — currently around $10 billion — could reach $750 billion by the end of 2028.
Other tokenized assets could jump from roughly $40 billion to $2 trillion in that same timeframe, he said. If regulatory clarity improves, Kendrick sees traditional finance and DeFi converging through consumer-facing apps that use blockchain infrastructure in the background. At press time, ETH traded at $2,052.
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