The History of Standard Chartered Megabullish Price Predictions

Standard Chartered initiated coverage of Uniswap with a price target of $100 by end of 2030, representing roughly a 40-fold increase from the $2.70 price at initiation. Uniswap had already risen 20 to 30 percent to around $3.30 to $3.50 following the call. Hitting $100 would require Uniswap to more than double its all-time high of approximately $40 set in April 2021, a level the token has not approached since.

The Uniswap thesis, attributed to analyst Jeff Kendrick, ties the governance token to the institutional tokenization of real world assets. Standard Chartered forecasts tokenized assets on chain reaching $4 trillion by end of 2028, with tokenized real world assets excluding stablecoins hitting $2 trillion over the same period, led by tokenized money market funds and US equities. DeFi's share of tokenized assets is projected to climb from 3.5 percent currently to 30 percent by 2030, pushing total value locked in DeFi to $2.7 trillion, a 37-fold increase. The jump from the current tokenized treasury market of roughly $11.23 billion, where Circle's USYC leads at $3 billion and BlackRock's BUIDL follows at $2.4 billion, to $2 trillion in roughly two years is flagged as a particularly lofty assumption.

Standard Chartered's track record on Bitcoin shows directional accuracy without precision. It called $50,000 by end of 2023 in July of that year, a target Bitcoin missed before reaching it shortly after. It called $100,000 by end of 2024 when Bitcoin was at $28,000 in April 2023, and Bitcoin touched $103,000 on December 5 before closing the year at $93,400. Its $250,000 cycle peak call for 2025 fell roughly 50 percent short, with Bitcoin reaching approximately $126,000. Open Bitcoin targets now include $200,000 by end of 2026, $225,000 by 2028, $300,000 by 2029, $400,000 by 2030, and $500,000 as an ultimate target.

Accuracy deteriorates further down the asset list. Standard Chartered projected Ethereum at $8,000 by 2025, revised to $14,000 at cycle peak, then to $10,000, and finally to $4,000 by end of 2025, against an actual top of around $4,950. Current Ethereum targets stand at $4,000 by 2027, $15,000 by 2028, $22,000 by 2029, and $30,000 by 2030. XRP was called at $550 by end of 2026 in April 2025, currently sitting 67 percent short of that mark, with longer targets of $7 by 2028 and above $28 by 2030. BNB was targeted at $1,275 by end of 2026, peaked at $1,355 in October but closed the year at $863, roughly 32 percent short. Avax was projected at $55 by end of 2026 and closed at $12.30, approximately 80 percent short.

Standard Chartered is characterized as the foremost permabull among TradFi institutions, one that appears never to issue a bearish call on any asset it covers. The comparison is drawn to Tom Lee and to the role John McAfee once played in crypto price prediction culture, suggesting the value of these calls lies more in sentiment signaling than in precise forecasting.