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Standard Chartered is telling clients to treat Ethereum\u2019s latest price slump the way Jeff Bezos told Amazon shareholders to treat the dot\u2011com crash, arguing that the token\u2019s \u201cstock is not the company\u201d and that fundamentals will force price to catch up over the next cycle.<\/p>\n
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Geoffrey Kendrick, Standard Chartered\u2019s global head of digital assets research, told clients he views Ethereum (ETH) \u201cvery much as Jeff Bezos described Amazon\u2019s share price during the 2001 tech bubble burst,\u201d insisting that the recent drawdown \u201cdoes not reflect continuing improvements in Ethereum\u2019s network fundamentals.\u201d The pitch is simple: Ethereum\u2019s price, which has slumped sharply from its recent highs and at times slipped below $2,000 in 2026, is \u201clagging behind its improving fundamentals and will eventually catch up,\u201d as one recap on\u00a0The Daily Block<\/a>\u00a0put it. In the client note, Kendrick explicitly channels Bezos\u2019s famous quip to argue that the market is mispricing what Ethereum has become. \u201cI view ETH\u2019s performance very much as Jeff Bezos described AMZN share price during the 2001 tech bubble burst,\u201d he wrote, adding that like early\u20112000s Amazon, Ethereum today is \u201cquietly becoming the backbone\u201d of a new financial stack, with on\u2011chain stablecoins, tokenized assets and DeFi activity all near record levels even as price chops lower.<\/p>\n The note zeroes in on a handful of metrics: near\u2011record daily transaction counts, Ethereum\u2019s still\u2011dominant share of stablecoin settlement and its lead in tokenized real\u2011world assets.<\/p>\n An internal forecast from Standard Chartered\u2019s digital assets team has stablecoin supply growing toward $2 trillion this cycle, much of it expected to sit or settle on Ethereum, with Kendrick arguing that \u201cmore activity should mean higher token price\u201d over time as base\u2011layer demand, fee markets and staking dynamics feed back into valuation.<\/p>\n
In a note summarized by journalist\u00a0Yogita<\/a>\u00a0and outlets like\u00a0The Block<\/a>, Kendrick leans on Bezos\u2019s line that \u201cthe stock is not the company,\u201d pointing to how Amazon fell to around $6 in the early 2000s before compounding into a trillion\u2011dollar behemoth.<\/p>\n
Kendrick and his team kept their headline targets unchanged at $4,000 by end\u20112026 and $40,000 by 2030, figures that imply a roughly 2x move over the next 18 months and up to a 20x rally into the end of the decade from price levels around $2,000\u2013$3,000 when the note was drafted.<\/p>\nBezos quote, stablecoins and tokenized assets<\/h2>\n