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Standard Chartered predicts ethereum will more than double this year

The investment bank thinks the prospects for ethereum have improved, citing BitMine’s continued buying, stablecoin adoption, the plan to increase the network’s throughput, and the passage of crypto-focused legislation.

Sage D. Young

1/12/26 1:21PM

Standard Chartered expects ethereum to outperform its older sibling bitcoin in the year.

Even though the firm lowered its end-of-year ethereum forecast from $12,000 to $7,500, Geoff Kendrick, global head of digital assets research at Standard Chartered, says the ETH-BTC ratio will return to 2021 highs.

According to a Monday research note, the forecast is largely informed by the network’s structural advantages, regulatory advancements, and flows from ETFs and treasury firms, such as BitMine Immersion Technologies, which added 24,266 tokens last week.

Standard Chartered expects the network to increase its throughput by 10x over two to three years following Vitalik Buterin’s 2025 announcement as well as optimism that the CLARITY Act, which aims to create a framework for digital asset markets, will pass the Senate.

The firm also sees stablecoins, tokenized real-world assets, and decentralized finance growing and for ethereum’s share to rise in tandem “as more TradFi activities move into the blockchain space, given that ethereum is trusted in the TradFi World.”

“Ethereum has been operating for over 10 years and its network has never gone down,” Kendrick wrote. “While other blockchains may be faster and cheaper, reliability will always trump marginal speed and cost savings for TradFi operators.”

On Monday, Buterin introduced the “walkway test,” where the network’s value proposition is not strictly tied to features that are not in the protocol already.

Passing this test includes full quantum resistance, scalable architecture to “many thousands of TPS [transactions per second],” and a block-building model resistant to centralization pressures.

Yaël Bizouati-Kennedy

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US-CRYPTOCURRENCY-CLIMATE-EMPLOYMENT-CHINA

$82B

Sage D. Young2h

Crypto money laundering activity totaled more than $82 billion in 2025, more than 8x higher than 2020’s figure of $10 billion, according to a Tuesday report published by crypto analytics firm Chainalysis. Chinese-language networks dominated the ecosystem, accounting for roughly 20% of the illicit activity, or $16.1 billion, last year:

“Compared to other laundering endpoints, since 2020, inflows to identified CMLNs [Chinese-langugage money laundering networks] grew 7,325 times faster than those to centralized exchanges, 1,810 times faster than those to decentralized finance (DeFi), and 2,190 times faster than intra-illicit on-chain flows.”

Tom Keatinge, director at the Centre for Finance & Security at security think tank Royal United Services Institute, told Chainalysis that the rapid development of Chinese-language networks is an “an unforeseen consequence” of China’s imposition of capital controls.

“Wealthy individuals seeking to move money out of China and evade these controls provide the impetus and liquidity pool needed to service organized crime groups based in the West,” he noted.

Keatinge told Chainalysis, “The professional enablers of this capital flight provide the services necessary to match these two independent yet mutually beneficial needs.”

Chinese-language networks offer six primary money movement techniques to clean dirty money, which include recruiting individuals to rent out their financial identities, selling illicit cryptocurrency at a discounted rate, and obscuring fund origins through multiple transactions.

Overall, this Chinese ecosystem processed nearly $44 million per day last year.

Sage D. Young24h

Avalanche joins class of cryptocurrencies with at least one ETF

Investment management company VanEck on Monday introduced the first exchange-traded fund offering spot exposure to AVAX, the native token for the Avalanche blockchain and the latest cryptocurrency with an ETF.

The new investment vehicle also aims to provide staking rewards for holders, according to the press release. AVAX, which has seen over $354 million in trading volume in the last 24 hours, is up slightly today. The token is trading at $11.70 as of 1:20 p.m. ET, a far cry from its all-time high of $144.96 in 2021.

The nascent VanEck fund joins a group of its crypto-specific ETFs, including the firm’s bitcoin ETF, with $1.4 billion in total assets; its ethereum ETF, which holds $147.5 million; and its solana ETF, with assets totaling $27.9 million.

Yaël Bizouati-Kennedy

1/26/26

Fears grow that bitcoin is entering a bear market

“While a new all-time high this year still isn’t out of the question, the next 30 days will be crucial in determining whether a bear market is already here.”

Sage D. Young1/23/26

Ethereum treasury firm ETHZilla acquires two aircraft engines (!?!?) in tokenization push

ETHZilla, known for its ethereum treasury, formed a new subsidiary and purchased aerospace equipment in a bid to boost the company’s tokenization efforts.

The treasury firm, through its nascent subsidiary ETHZilla Aerospace LLC, “acquired two CFM56-7B24 aircraft engines, together with all parts, engine records and engine stands” for $12.2 million from Avean Engine Solutions, according to an 8K filing on Friday with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

The two aircraft engines are subject to lease agreements with a major airline, which were assigned to ETHZilla as part of the acquisition, the filing stated.

The firm’s top priority in 2026 is growing its real-world asset tokenization business and is keen on rolling out RWA tokens in the first quarter, an ETHZilla representative told Sherwood News at the beginning of the year.

ETHZilla’s acquisition of two aircraft engines is part of this tokenization road map, which aims to bring real-world assets from high-value vertical markets, such as aerospace, maritime, and heavy equipment, on-chain.

“In the heavy equipment market, we will initially focus on aerospace assets such as aircraft engines and airframes to tokenize,” ETHZilla Chairman and CEO McAndrew Rudisill said in his shareholder letter from December. “This represents a large, growing market with quality high-yielding assets, and we believe it is a very attractive space for tokenization.”

Standard Chartered predicts ethereum will more than double this year

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