Standard Chartered Sticks to ETH Targets as CFTC Moves on Gemini

Standard Chartered’s digital assets team reaffirmed price targets for ether of $4,000 by the end of 2026 and $40,000 by 2030 in a report issued Thursday. The bank cited sustained on-chain activity and high levels of value locked on Ethereum despite recent price weakness.

The report noted ether has fallen about 57% from an August 2025 peak above $4,800 to below $2,000 at the time of the report. Standard Chartered pointed to transaction counts and total value locked, measured in ETH terms, as metrics that remain near record levels.

Standard Chartered projected that the stablecoin market could expand roughly sixfold to about $2 trillion by 2028 and that tokenized non-stablecoin assets could grow roughly 50-fold to a similar size. The bank estimated Ethereum would host roughly half to two-thirds of each market and assumed a return of the ETH/BTC ratio toward 2021 levels around 0.08.

Geoff Kendrick, global head of digital assets research at Standard Chartered, compared the gap between network activity and spot prices to past technology-sector divergences, using the example of a company whose internal operations were strong even as its share price fell: “everything inside the company was going the right way.”

Separately, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission filed a request Wednesday in Manhattan federal court to vacate a $5 million settlement with crypto exchange Gemini that was reached in January 2025. The agency said it had reviewed the matter and concluded the original complaint “should not have been filed — and would not have been under current enforcement standards.” The filing characterized parts of the case as based largely on a whistleblower account the agency found lacking in credibility.

Under the existing settlement, Gemini paid a $5 million fine in January 2025 after the CFTC accused the exchange of making false or misleading statements related to a bitcoin futures contract. The agency’s court filing seeks to end ongoing obligations tied to the settlement, including an injunction that bars Gemini from making false or misleading statements to the CFTC. The filing did not state whether the agency plans to refund the penalty.

Public records show Gemini co-founders Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss each donated $1 million to the 2024 presidential campaign of Donald Trump. The CFTC did not link those contributions to its review in the filing.

In Texas politics, crypto-aligned political action committees reported results from primaries this week after backing six candidates for U.S. House and Senate races. Federal Election Commission records show the PACs spent more than $10 million on media and ads supporting the six candidates. One PAC, Fairshake, reported a cash balance exceeding $193 million as of January and indicated plans to fund pro-crypto campaigns ahead of the 2026 midterms.

The Standard Chartered report, the CFTC court filing and the Texas primary spending all occurred within the same week and were filed or reported between Tuesday and Thursday.