Standard Chartered (STAN) is comparing Ethereum’s (CRYPTO: $ETH) current decline to e-commerce giant Amazon (NASDAQ: $AMZN) after the dot-com bubble burst in 2001.
In a note to clients, Standard Chartered said that the recent price weakness does not reflect Ethereum’s improving internal metrics.
“I view ETH’s performance very much as Jeff Bezos described AMZN share price during the 2001 tech bubble burst. This quote, from a 2018 speech, encapsulates the point: ‘The stock is not the company. And the company is not the stock. And so, as I watched the stock fall from $113 to $6, I was also watching all of our internal business metrics… every single thing about the business was getting better,” writes Standard Chartered analyst Geoffrey Kendrick.
“I also note AMZN share price (once adjusted for stock splits) has multiplied 1000x since the 2001 lows. ETH will catch up to the internal metrics, it is just a matter of time,” he adds.
The bullish outlook from the British bank comes with Ethereum’s price having fallen below the key support level of $2,000 U.S. over the past 24 hours amid a selloff in cryptocurrencies.
Kendrick notes that Ethereum’s internal metrics, such as transaction numbers and total value locked, remain near all-time highs.
However, Ethereum’s price has fallen nearly 60% from its August 2025 all-time high, while the ETH-Bitcoin (CRYPTO: $BTC) ratio has declined 37% over the same period.
Stronger metrics should eventually drive higher ETH prices, according to Kendrick.
The analyst maintains his long-term ETH forecasts, reiterating price targets of $4,000 U.S. by the end of 2026 and $40,000 U.S. by the end of 2030.
Kendrick’s bullish thesis centres on Ethereum’s dominance in stablecoins and tokenized real-world assets.
He also reiterated his forecast that the stablecoin market cap could rise sixfold to around $2 trillion U.S. by the end of 2028 from $321 billion U.S. today.
In terms of catalysts, Kendrick noted the upcoming launch of the “Ethereum Economic Zone” that is designed to allow assets to move more freely across the Ethereum ecosystem.
ETH was trading at $1,975 U.S. on May 28.
