Standard Chartered’s head of digital-assets research says Ethereum could surge to $40,000 by 2030 — and may outpace Bitcoin on the way.
In a recent Milk Road interview with John Gillen, Geoffrey Kendrick laid out a bullish roadmap for ETH driven not by hype but by where traditional finance (TradFi) is most likely to build first. Kendrick argues that banks, asset managers and other large institutions will favor Ethereum’s mainnet as the safest initial on-chain infrastructure, making it the natural landing spot for the next wave of tokenization and stablecoin growth.
Why Ethereum could get an institutional head start
Kendrick’s thesis rests on adoption sequencing: institutions will likely deploy on Ethereum layer 1 first, then expand to layer-2s and alternative chains. He cited BlackRock’s rollout approach as an example of how that strategy could play out — activity and liquidity land on Ethereum before dispersing outward. “It’ll be very safe to say I’m going to build on Ethereum layer one…because it’s never gone down,” Kendrick said.
A different valuation lens: fees over market cap
Rather than focusing on narratives, Kendrick looks at protocol and application fees relative to market cap as a meaningful valuation signal. More on-chain activity and fee capture in the Ethereum ecosystem, he argues, should translate into higher ETH prices. Based on that framework, he expects ETH to outperform for the foreseeable future and predicts the ETH/BTC ratio — roughly 0.03 today — could rise to about 0.04 this year.
Big price targets and the tokenization thesis
Kendrick reiterated his bold long-term numbers: Bitcoin at $500,000 and Ethereum at $40,000 by 2030. He sees the growth engine as tokenized dollars and funds. His forecasts include:
- Stablecoins expanding from about $300 billion today to $2 trillion over the coming years.
- Tokenized money market funds rising from roughly $10 billion now to $750 billion by the end of 2028, assuming a meaningful share of transactions and corporate treasury flows move on-chain.
- Other tokenized assets growing from roughly $40 billion today to $2 trillion by the end of 2028 — a roughly 50x increase in three years.
From tokenized cash to DeFi adoption
Kendrick envisions a path where corporate treasuries and institutional liquidity increasingly stay on-chain — not just in stablecoins, but in tokenized cash-equivalent funds — because traditional off-chain fiat rails are slower and less efficient. As regulatory clarity improves, he expects TradFi and DeFi to converge: regulated institutions could route customer cash into on-chain products and consumer-facing apps will use blockchain rails in the background. That, he says, could expand financial inclusion even if most end users don’t notice the blockchain plumbing.
The bottom line
For Kendrick, the core of the Ethereum trade is institutional comfort: compliance teams will choose the chain they view as safest for an initial buildout, and today that chain looks like Ethereum. At the time of the interview, ETH traded around $2,059.
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