On Wednesday, British multinational bank Standard Chartered delighted crypto proponents with a forecast that ether, the native cryptocurrency of the Ethereum blockchain, will tap an impressive $8,000 by the end of 2026.

How ETH Could Rocket 5X To $8,000 By 2026

According to a new report by Standard Chartered Bank today, the ether price could see a five-fold increase from the current price over the next three years.

In the report, the bank predicted ETH’s rise will be mainly driven by the crypto’s dominance in smart contracts and growing uses for the Ethereum network in gaming and tokenization.

“We think Ethereum’s established dominance in smart contract platforms, along with emerging uses in gaming and tokenization, has the potential to push ETH to the $8,000 level by end-2026 (a 5x multiple from the current price of $1,600),” wrote Geoff Kendrick, one of Standard Chartered’s top FX analysts.

Notably, Ethereum’s current main use cases are non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and decentralized finance (DeFi). But Kendrick thinks real-world adoption in areas like gaming and tokenization should bring “significant demand” to ether.

According to Standard Chartered, Ethereum L2 scaling networks are also likely to boom, thanks to Ethereum’s imminent technical improvements, like proto-danksharding, that will reduce transaction fees on these networks. These enhancements, in turn, should “help to cement Ethereum’s dominance in the smart contract space, thereby increasing its P/E ratio (if not its earnings) over the next couple of years,” the bank continued.

Bitcoin Halving’s Impact On Ether Price

Moreover, the forthcoming Bitcoin halving event — where the reward for mining a new block of BTC is halved — in April 2024 should provide a tailwind for cryptocurrencies, ether in particular, Kendrick observed. “Subsequently, potential regulation and spot ETFs in the U.S. should benefit ETH as much as BTC; we pencil this in for late 2024, after the U.S. election,” he explained. This should see ether reaching $4,000 by the end of next year.

Looking further into the future, Kendrick views the $8,000 target as an initial milestone toward the bank’s “long-term structural valuation” target of $26,000-$35,000.