Standard Chartered kept its view that Ethereum will reach $40,000 by the end of 2030 even after the price fell below $2,000.

BeInCrypto, a blockchain media outlet, reported on May 28 that Standard Chartered reaffirmed targets of $4,000 by the end of 2026 and $40,000 by the end of 2030 in a client research note.

Geoff Kendrick (제프 켄드릭), Standard Chartered's head of digital assets research, compared the latest decline to Amazon's share-price moves during the 2001 dotcom crash. He said internal network indicators are improving, but Ethereum's price is not reflecting them.

The research note said transaction counts and total value locked were near record highs in ETH terms. By contrast, Ethereum is now below $2,000, down 57 percent from $4,946 recorded in August 2025.

Kendrick cited comments by Jeff Bezos in 2018 in explaining that view. Bezos said internal business indicators kept improving even as Amazon shares fell from $113 to $6 in 2001. Kendrick pointed out that Amazon shares later rose about 1,000 times from 2001 after reflecting stock splits.

Kendrick said the stablecoin market capitalisation would rise sixfold by the end of 2028, while tokenised real-world assets would increase 50-fold over the same period. He expected Ethereum to account for 50 to 65 percent of both markets.

Near-term supply and demand signals were mixed. The ETH/BTC ratio fell to about 0.027, the lowest level in 5 years. Santiment data showed retail investors increased buy orders after the break below $2,000, but institutional fund flows moved in the opposite direction.

Polymarket priced the probability that Ethereum will end this year below $1,500 at 54 percent. The related trading volume was $6.4 million. It also said rising open interest and positive funding rates created about $2 billion of exposure to a short squeeze. That risk could increase if Ethereum regains the $2,000 level.

A key variable for the long-term outlook is whether rising network use translates into value for ETH itself. David Hoffman (데이비드 호프먼), co-founder of Bankless, argued that value is accruing to applications and layer-2 networks rather than ETH.