Standard Chartered says Ethereum’s recent market weakness does not reflect the condition of the network itself. Geoffrey Kendrick, the bank’s global head of digital assets research, compared ETH to Amazon during the 2001 dot-com crash: Amazon’s stock collapsed, but its internal business metrics continued to improve. Kendrick argues that Ethereum is now showing a similar gap between price action and underlying activity.

According to the bank, ETH has fallen about 57% from its August 2025 high to around $2,000, while the ETH/BTC ratio is down roughly 37% over the same period. At the same time, Ethereum transaction counts and total value locked measured in ETH terms remain near record highs. Kendrick’s view is that ETH will eventually catch up to those internal metrics.

Standard Chartered maintained its bullish targets of $4,000 for ETH by the end of 2026 and $40,000 by the end of 2030. The caveat is important: this is a forecast, not a certainty. The Amazon comparison is powerful but imperfect, because a public company and a decentralized network capture value differently. For investors, the key question is whether Ethereum’s activity in stablecoins, DeFi and tokenization can translate into sustained demand for ETH itself.