Standard Chartered’s Geoffrey Kendrick Sees Ethereum Beating Bitcoin by 40% This Year

Ethereum is losing ground in dollar terms. But against Bitcoin, the picture looks very different right now.

Geoffrey Kendrick, head of digital assets research at Standard Chartered, thinks Ethereum is quietly setting up for a major run relative to Bitcoin. His case rests on a structural argument that’s pretty simple once you break it down: companies holding Ethereum can stake their coins to generate yield, covering operational costs without ever touching their principal. Bitcoin treasury firms can’t do that. They’re stuck either sitting on an asset that produces nothing or selling into the market to fund operations — a constant drag. Kendrick flagged a recent $2.5 million Bitcoin sale by a key holder as exactly the kind of friction that makes Bitcoin treasury management harder, and he sees it as a potential turning point for the ETH/BTC ratio.

The ratio sat at 0.028 when Kendrick published his view — down sharply from a peak of 0.042. He wants it back to 0.04 by year-end, which would put Ethereum outperforming Bitcoin by more than 40%. On the price side, he’s projecting Ethereum at $2,700 in the near term and $4,000 before the year closes out. Ethereum was trading under $1,900 at the time, well off its high of nearly $5,000 hit earlier.

The Staking Edge Standard Chartered Keeps Pushing

The staking argument isn’t new, but Kendrick is leaning into it harder than most sell-side analysts. The basic logic is this: if you hold ETH in a corporate treasury, you can put it to work. Yield comes in. Operations get funded. You don’t need to liquidate. Bitmine is the kind of company Kendrick points to as a beneficiary — a firm that can run on staking income rather than asset sales. Bitcoin treasury companies face a different math entirely. No native yield mechanism exists. When cash is needed, coins get sold. That selling pressure is real and it’s structural, not cyclical.

The market, per Kendrick, is still catching up to this distinction. Slow adaptation to a structural edge is basically an opportunity, and he seems to think Ethereum holders who understand the staking dynamic are positioned ahead of the broader crowd. The recent single-day ETH/BTC outperformance move — one of the largest since early 2024 — was the kind of signal he was watching for.

Not everyone will buy the bull case cleanly. A broad risk-off move could drag both assets lower, and Kendrick didn’t shy away from the downside scenario. If macro conditions deteriorate sharply, Ethereum could fall below $1,600. That’s a real number on the table, not a tail risk buried in footnotes. The volatility in crypto doesn’t disappear just because one asset has a structural advantage over another.

See also: Polymarkets $80M Strategy Bitcoin Bet Triggers Final Dispute Over 32 BTC Sale Timing

Bitcoin Hyper Raises $32.7 Million Targeting Ethereum’s Turf

On the Bitcoin side, there’s a project trying to close the gap. Bitcoin Hyper is building yield-generating infrastructure on top of Bitcoin by integrating Solana Virtual Machine capabilities — essentially borrowing Solana’s programmability and speed and layering it onto Bitcoin’s base layer. Faster transactions, lower fees, smart contract functionality. It’s a direct attempt to address the limitations that make Bitcoin less flexible than Ethereum for developers and treasury managers.

The presale raised $32.7 million. Early participants are being offered an annual percentage yield of 36%. That’s a big number, and it’s clearly attracting capital from people who want Bitcoin exposure with some of the yield characteristics that Ethereum already provides natively.

Whether Bitcoin Hyper actually reshapes how the market thinks about Bitcoin’s utility is unclear yet. Presale momentum doesn’t always translate into sustained protocol adoption. The 36% APY will draw attention, but the harder question is whether the Solana Virtual Machine integration holds up at scale and whether developers actually build on it. No details on a mainnet timeline were in Kendrick’s analysis.

More context: BITmarkets Claims 44.51% Bitcoin Gains as AI Beats Buy-and-Hold by 30 Points

Kendrick’s broader comparison — likening Ethereum’s current position to Amazon’s recovery after the dot-com crash — probably won’t land with everyone. It’s the kind of analogy that sounds great in a research note and gets stress-tested fast by anyone who’s watched crypto cycles. But the structural staking argument doesn’t need the Amazon comparison to stand on its own.

The ETH/BTC ratio at 0.028. The $2,700 short-term target. The $32.7 million already in Bitcoin Hyper’s presale. Those are the numbers worth watching.