Ether’s Dismal Decline: A Comedy of Errors in Cryptocurrency

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What to know:

  • Standard Chartered has dramatically slashed its year-end 2025 ether target to a mere $4,000 from the lofty heights of $10,000.
  • Layer 2 blockchains, like Coinbase’s Base, have taken a sledgehammer to ether’s market cap.
  • While ether is expected to recover from its current state of despair, it will continue to underperform, according to the report.

In a revelation that has sent shockwaves through the crypto community, Standard Chartered (STAN) has declared that ether’s (ETH) structural decline is not merely a phase but a full-blown existential crisis. The investment bank, in a report that could only be described as a financial tragedy, has slashed its 2025 year-end price target for the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency to a paltry $4,000, down from a rather optimistic $10,000. At the time of this grim announcement, ether was languishing at around $1,903, a figure that would make even the most hardened investor weep.

“Ether is at a crossroads,” the report laments, noting that while it “still dominates on several metrics,” this dominance has been slipping away like a politician’s promise. Layer 2 blockchains, which were heralded as the saviors of scalability on the Ethereum blockchain, have instead turned into the proverbial albatross around ether’s neck. Standard Chartered estimates that Coinbase’s (COIN) Base has effectively vaporized $50 billion from ether’s market cap, and they expect this trend to continue, much to the chagrin of ether enthusiasts.

Market forces, they suggest, could eventually halt this structural decline—especially if tokenized real-world assets were to experience a miraculous growth spurt. After all, “ETH’s security dominance means it should maintain its 80% share of this market,” muses Geoff Kendrick, head of digital assets research at Standard Chartered, as if that were a comforting thought.

However, the bank is not holding its breath. “Only a proactive change of commercial direction from the Ethereum Foundation—such as taxing layer 2s—could achieve that now,” they quip, though they admit this is about as likely as finding a unicorn in the wild.

In a final flourish of pessimism, Standard Chartered predicts that the ETH/BTC ratio will plummet to 0.015 by year-end 2027, marking the lowest level since 2017. Yet, they still cling to the hope that ether’s price will recover from its current nadir, buoyed by a rally in bitcoin (BTC) that is expected to lift all digital assets—though ether’s underperformance is likely to continue, much like a bad sitcom that refuses to be canceled.

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2025-03-17 16:53