Standard Chartered analyst Geoff Kendrick is highly bullish on Ether, the cryptocurrency which has been in a downtrend over the past three months. In a research note this morning, he predicted that Ether could hit $8,000 by the end of 2026, representing a 5x growth in three years.
Kendrick believes that Ethereum will reclaim its dominance in smart contracts, and that new use cases will help drive its price up. Layer 2 scaling solutions, he said, are likely to become increasingly important over time, and should contribute to increasing its price-to-earnings ratio.
Earlier this month, Grayscale filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission to convert its Ethereum trust, the largest Ether investment vehicle in the world, into a Spot ETH exchange-traded fund.
Kendrick also expressed optimism that Layer 2 solutions, which are built on Ethereum for efficiency, could help its price-to-earnings ratio. Arbitrum and Optimism, in particular, prevent transactions from spilling over to a competing network.
Finally, the analyst stated that Ethereum’s established dominance in smart contracts, as well as its potential for use in gaming and tokenization, could push ETH to $8,000. He did add, however, that $26,000 to $35,000 is a possible valuation, but that this would require revenue streams and use cases that have yet to materialise.
