Table of Contents
Institutional Investors Look Down on ETH
The performance of Ethereum in this round of the bull market has been quite poor, and it has dropped more sharply than others during the market correction, leading to a dramatic decline in investor confidence. According to Bloomberg’s statistics, the net total of leveraged cash-settled Ethereum positions on CFTC and CME has surged significantly, with net leveraged positions remaining in negative territory for an extended period. Notably, since February 2025, short positions have reached extreme lows, indicating that institutional investors also hold a pessimistic view on Ethereum and have opened a large number of leveraged short positions against it.
Standard Chartered Cuts ETH Target Price
Meanwhile, analysts at Standard Chartered stated in their latest report that the price of Ethereum will continue to experience “structural declines” by the end of this year, lowering their price target for 2025 from $10,000 to $4,000. Geoff Kendrick, the bank’s Head of Global Digital Asset Research, noted in a market report that the market capitalization ratio of Ethereum relative to Bitcoin (ETH-to-BTC ratio) has reached a historical low and is expected to continue to decline slowly until the end of 2027. Even if the absolute price of Ethereum rises, its market capitalization will increasingly diverge from that of Bitcoin.
Geoff Kendrick attributed the decline in Ethereum’s relative dominance to the rise of Layer-2 networks, including the Base network supported by Coinbase. He estimated that Base has siphoned off $50 billion from Ethereum’s market capitalization, as transaction fees flow elsewhere when users trade on the Layer-2 network instead of the mainnet, which reduces the fees collected by Ethereum and subsequently impacts ETH prices.
Kendrick believes that if the Ethereum Foundation proactively changes its business strategy, such as taxing Layer-2 networks, it could alleviate these issues and enhance its market share, but he considers this “unlikely.” He mentioned that if tokenization of real-world assets (mostly built on Ethereum) suddenly gains popularity, or if Ethereum’s security advantages are sufficient to maintain its prominence in that field, it could help Ethereum retain its market dominance, but he no longer regards these as reliable foundations for his mid-term perspective.
At the same time, the Ethereum community is preparing to launch its largest upgrade since the “Merge” in 2022—Pectra, which is expected to go live on the mainnet as early as April 25. Pectra will enhance ETH staking capabilities, significantly increase existing limits, and allow gas fees to be paid with cryptocurrencies other than ETH. However, this upgrade encountered technical issues during testing, and based on the current market reaction, even if the upgrade is successfully completed, it is unlikely to provide much benefit to the price of Ethereum.
Why Did FamilyMart Enter the Cryptocurrency Sector? Trump’s Second Son Reveals the Truth Behind It.
He stated that the family originally had no plans to enter this field, but the banking sys…