Ether may not hit a new record this year after all, according to Standard Chartered. The firm expects ether's recent weakness to continue this year, and although it sees its price more than doubling this year from current levels, Standard Chartered cut its year-end price target on the coin to $4,000 from $10,000. The second largest cryptocurrency by market cap is down 42% this year and at $1,932, it's trading at its lowest level since 2023. (For comparison, crypto leader bitcoin is down 10% year to date.) The recent sell-off in risk assets, fueled by skittish investors worried about the impact of President Donald Trump's tariffs on the global economy, has made things even worse for the coin. Ether had already been suffering from an identity crisis, weaker revenue since its last big technical upgrade and increasing competition from Solana, when it was dealt this latest blow. ETH.CM= 1Y mountain Ether (ETH) 1-year "We still see ETH-USD rising from the current level of $1,900 as BTC price gains lift all large digital assets this year. But we see ETH underperformance continuing," Standard Chartered analyst Geoff Kendrick said in a note Monday. "It is possible that market dynamics could eventually halt Ethereum's structural decline, especially if tokenized real-world assets were to grow significantly," he added. "ETH's security dominance means it should maintain its 80% share of this market. However, we think this possibility is no longer a sound basis for our medium-term views." Kendrick pointed to the increasing dominance of so-called Layer 2 solutions. These are secondary blockchains built on top of base layer networks like Ethereum or Bitcoin to extend their capabilities, but can shift investment and usage away from the underlying network. In particular, Coinbase's Layer 2 blockchain built on Ethereum, called Base, has extracted about $50 billion of ether's market cap, and Kendrick said he expects that number to rise over time. Kendrick also noted that transaction fees on Ethereum have been lower since the last big technical upgrade, dubbed "Dencun," which took place in March 2024. "While [Ethereum] still dominates on several metrics – with shares of more than 50% of total value locked in decentralized finance (DeFi) assets, 57% of stablecoins and 80% of tokenized assets – its dominance has been waning for some time," Kendrick said. "Assuming no change in direction from the Ethereum Foundation, we think ETH-BTC will continue to head lower over the next two years, from the current level of 0.023 to 0.015 by 2027 – the lowest level since early 2017," he added. —CNBC's Michael Bloom contributed reporting.
