Can ethereum reclaim 2021 highs versus bitcoin?

Investing.com -- Standard Chartered analyst Geoff Kendrick is standing by a bullish long-term outlook for ethereum, arguing that a disconnect between the token's improving internal metrics and its lagging price is temporary and that a catch-up is only a matter of time.

Ethereum has fallen 57% from its August 2025 high to around $2,100, with the ETH-BTC ratio down 37% over the same period.

Yet Kendrick noted that transaction numbers and total value locked, measured in ETH terms, remain close to all-time highs.

To explain the gap between fundamentals and price, Standard Chartered drew a parallel with Amazon during the 2001 dot-com bust, citing Jeff Bezos's observation that "while the stock price was going the wrong way, everything inside the company was going the right way."

The bank said it thinks "the same applies to the current ETH price" and sees "significant scope for the ETH price to catch back up to internal metrics."

Standard Chartered reaffirmed its ETH price forecasts of $4,000 by end-2026 and $40,000 by end-2030. The bank said those targets would take the ETH-BTC ratio back to its 2021 highs of around 0.08.

The bullish case rests partly on ethereum's dominance in stablecoins and tokenized real-world assets, two segments Standard Chartered expects to grow sharply.

The bank projects stablecoin market cap will increase sixfold by end-2028, while tokenized non-stablecoin real-world assets will multiply 50 times over the same period.

Ethereum currently holds a 50% to 65% share of both markets, which together account for more than half of total value locked on the network.

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