Standard Chartered cuts Ethereum’s 2025 price prediction to $4,000, blaming Layer 2 chains like Base for sucking up profits.
Standard Chartered just landed a bombshell on Ethereum (ETH). The bank lowered its 2025 price prediction from $10,000 to $4,000, a 60% cut. Why? Well, according to Geoffrey Kendrick, the bank’s global head of digital assets research, Layer 2 networks like Base are snatching up Ethereum’s profits. These networks, designed to make transactions cheaper and faster, are actually hurting ETH by taking a huge chunk of market share. Kendrick estimates that Base alone has removed $50 billion from Ethereum’s market cap.
So, what’s happening? Ethereum’s Layer 2 networks are doing great, but they’re skipping the main network and lowering ETH’s transaction fees, which leaves Ethereum with fewer profits to grow. The Dencun upgrade in March 2024 was supposed to boost Ethereum but ended up benefiting Layer 2s instead.
The only solution, according to Kendrick, would be to tax these Layer 2 networks, but he doesn’t see that happening. Standard Chartered predicts that ETH/BTC could hit 0.015 by 2027, marking a drop from its previous high in 2017.
However, ETH still holds strong in DeFi and tokenized real-world assets, so there’s hope for future growth—just not for 2025.
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