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Institutional Investors Bearish on ETH
The performance of Ether (ETH) in this bull market has been quite poor, and during market corrections, it has fallen more sharply than others, leading to a significant decline in investor confidence. According to statistics from Bloomberg, the net total of leveraged cash-settled Ethereum positions at the CFTC and CME has surged significantly, with net leveraged positions remaining in negative territory for a long time. Particularly since February 2025, short positions have reached extreme lows, indicating that institutional investors are also pessimistic about Ether, opening a large number of leveraged short positions against it.
Standard Chartered Cuts ETH Price Target
Meanwhile, analysts at Standard Chartered Bank pointed out in their latest report that the price of Ether is expected to continue its “structural decline” by the end of this year, and they have lowered their price target for 2025 from $10,000 to $4,000. Geoff Kendrick, the bank’s global head of digital asset research, noted in a market report that the market value ratio of Ethereum relative to Bitcoin (BTC), known as the ETH-to-BTC ratio, has hit an all-time low, and is expected to decline slowly until the end of 2027. Even if the absolute price of Ethereum rises, its market value 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 estimates that Base has siphoned off $50 billion from Ethereum’s market value, as transaction fees flow elsewhere when users trade on Layer-2 networks instead of the mainnet, which reduces the fees collected by Ethereum and subsequently impacts ETH prices.
Kendrick believes that if the Ethereum Foundation actively alters its business strategy, such as imposing taxes on Layer-2 networks, it could alleviate these issues and enhance its market share, though he considers this “unlikely.” He mentioned that if tokenization of real-world assets (mostly built on Ethereum) suddenly becomes popular or if Ethereum’s security advantages are sufficient to maintain its appeal in this domain, it could help Ether retain its market dominance, but these are no longer reliable foundations for his mid-term outlook.
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 has encountered technical issues during testing, and based on the current market reaction, even if the upgrade is successfully completed, it is unlikely to significantly benefit the price of Ether.
