#Gate广场四月发帖挑战

Jefferie Kendrick, Head of Global Digital Asset Research at Standard Chartered Bank, stated that Ethereum could rise to $40k by 2030 and surpass Bitcoin in the process. He believes that the next wave of tokenization, growth in stablecoins, and institutional blockchain development are most likely to first emerge on Ethereum.

In an interview with John Gillen of Milk Road, Kendrick linked his views on Ethereum directly to how traditional finance is building on-chain infrastructure. His argument is not that Ethereum wins because of its narrative advantage, but because it appears to be the safest choice for banks, asset managers, and large institutions to start building.

Why Ethereum’s performance might outperform Bitcoin

In January this year, Kendrick released a report titled "Ethereum Expected to Surpass Expectations." During the interview, he admitted that Ethereum’s price has underperformed since then, but he maintains that its underlying architecture remains solid. “The interesting thing about Ethereum is that, with Tradfi joining in, Tradfi can build all kinds of applications on Ethereum,” he said. “I can confidently say I will develop on Ethereum Layer 1, right? Because it has never gone down. So I think many applications were initially developed on Ethereum Layer 1.”

He pointed out that BlackRock’s promotional strategy could serve as a model for this kind of adoption. Kendrick believes institutional investors are likely to start on Ethereum mainnet first, then expand to other chains and Layer 2 networks. This sequence is crucial because he thinks that before value disperses elsewhere, capital activity will flow into the Ethereum mainnet.

Kendrick said he is increasingly inclined to view the ratio of protocol and application fees to market cap as a more effective metric for Ethereum valuation. He believes that the higher the activity within the Ethereum ecosystem, the higher the token price should be. “I think this means Ethereum is currently outperforming Bitcoin, and will continue to do so in the foreseeable future,” he said. He also added that, based on his predictions, the current ETH/BTC ratio is about 0.03 and could rise to 0.04 this year. Looking long-term, he stated, “I expect Bitcoin to reach $500k by 2030, and Ethereum to reach $40k. Clearly, Ethereum’s performance will far surpass Bitcoin’s, with enormous upside potential.”

The broader driver behind this call is tokenization. Kendrick said stablecoin market cap could grow from the current approximately $300 billion to $2 trillion in the next few years, which he believes will drive demand for tokenized money market funds. He pointed out that if corporate treasurers’ other idle funds remain trapped in slower off-chain systems, they won’t hold only tokenized cash.

“Tomorrow, if you want to leverage the 24/7 instant settlement and near-zero cost advantages of stablecoins, you should transfer all your millions of dollars on-chain,” Kendrick said. “You definitely wouldn’t want to sell stablecoins and revert to the stupid fiat era, where settlement is ridiculously slow by comparison. Instead, you should move all off-chain money market funds on-chain too.”

This leads to a bolder numerical prediction. He estimates that the current tokenized money market fund size of about $10 billion could reach $750 billion by the end of 2028. His forecast is based on the assumption that even if only 10% of transactions shift to stablecoins in the coming years, similar exposure in money market funds might also need to move on-chain. He also predicts that the size of other tokenized assets could grow from around $40 billion today to $2 trillion by the end of 2028, representing a 50-fold increase over three years.

Kendrick believes this path could lead to decentralized finance (DeFi). He said that if the regulatory environment becomes clearer, traditional finance and DeFi might find convergence, with consumer-facing applications using blockchain technology in the background to channel funds into products like Aave, Morpho, or Compound. “I think DeFi will ultimately return to the realm of financial fairness and inclusive finance,” he said. “Most people may not understand its origins, but I believe that in the next few years, these technologies will be widely adopted.”

For Kendrick, this is the core of Ethereum trading. If tokenized dollars, tokenized funds, and ultimately tokenized stocks can attract institutional liquidity on-chain, the first phase of building is most likely to happen where compliance teams are most familiar. In his view, this still points to Ethereum.