Standard Chartered drops 2025 ETH price estimate by 60% to $4K

Standard Chartered downgrades its ETH price expectations, while one analyst compares trading Ethereum to “catching a falling knife.”

Ethereum price is more than 52% down from its December 2024 high at $4,107 and data from TradingView shows ETH (ETH) down 42% since the start of 2025.

Despite being one of the largest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization and holding the dominant spot as the leader in Web3 and DeFi, many analysts believe that ETHs price prospects remain grim in the short term.

Crypto analyst and chartered market technician Askel Kibar warned traders against assuming that ETH price trades at a discount simply based on how far off it is from its average trading price.

On X, Kibar explained that “bottom reversals take time” given that “ all that supply needs to be accumulated.”

ETH/USD daily chart. Source: X Aksel Kibar

Referring to the chart above, Kibar said,

“Those of you that want to see ETH outperform BTC need to see similar price action to 2018-2020 period. After an extending downtrend price formed a double bottom late in 2019. Then it turned out to a larger scale H&S bottom reversal.”

Currently, ETHs chart does not show any type of bottoming formation, leading Kibar to compare trading Ethereum to “catching a falling knife.”

Standard Chartered chops 2025 ETH price to $4,000

Standard Chartered added to the dim outlook via a March 17 client letter, which revised down their end of 2025 ETH price estimate from $10,000 to $4,000, a drastic 60% reduction.

Geoff Kendrick, the banks global head of Digital Assets Research, said, “We expect ETH to continue its structural decline.” Adding that:

“Layer 2 blockchains were meant to improve ETH scalability, but we estimate that Base (a key layer 2) has removed USD 50bn from ETHs market cap.”

Kendrick cited lower ETH fees, a “higher net issuance,” and layer 2 blockchains “taking Ethereums GDP” as an unexpected result of the Dencun upgrade.

Adding to their observation of Base absorbing Ethereums fee revenue, Kendrick said,

“In particular, Base — a layer 2 that was developed to address the problem of scalability on Ethereum— is passing all the profit (fee revenue minus data recording fees) it extracts to Coinbase, its corporate owner.”

Related: Long-term Ethereum accumulation could unwind if ETH price falls below $1.9K — Analyst

VanEck Head of Digital Assets Research Matthew Sigel and Patrick Bush, the firm's Senior Analyst on Digital Assets, concur with the dim ETH price view held by many analysts. In a March 5 note to investors, the researchers cited ETHs decline as being “largely due to the erosion of the core factors that once made Ethereum valuable.”

The analysts again cited layer 2 blockchains Arbitrum and Base as catalysts in diminishing ETHs fee revenue, along with the popularity of memecoin trading on the Solana blockchain.