TradFi Floods Into Crypto ETFs as Standard Chartered Backs ETH Treasuries at $7,500 Target

[Redator]

One of the City’s biggest banks has reframed Ethereum’s sharp ETH USD price pullback from its all-time high as a golden entry point. Standard Chartered’s head of digital assets, Geoffrey Kendrick, told clients this week that ETH USD remains structurally undervalued, setting a $7,500 year-end target on the back of rising institutional demand and a wave of treasury allocations.

Kendrick’s note highlighted that Ethereum-focused exchange-traded funds and corporate treasury firms have accumulated 4.9% of circulating supply since June, a figure he expects to hit 10% by year-end.

That steady absorption of tokens has been the decisive factor behind ETH’s run to $4,953 on Sunday, eclipsing the record set in November 2021 before retracing -11% in the following sessions.

Crypto ETFs then Treasuries? How Legit is Standard Chartered’s ETH USD Price Prediction?

Ethereum

Price

Market Cap

ETH

$544.85B

24h7d30d1yAll time

What matters to Standard Chartered is not the correction but the structural bid. “ETH and the ETH treasury companies are cheap at today’s levels,” Kendrick wrote, stressing that corporate treasuries gain dual advantages in staking rewards and DeFi yield opportunities unavailable to ETF investors.

In his view, ETH treasuries make more sense than Bitcoin treasuries, which offer yield options limited to passive holding.

Flows confirm the thesis. Data from SoSoValue shows Ethereum ETFs pulled in $443.9M on Monday alone, more than double the $219M that went into Bitcoin equivalents.

(Source – Ethereum ETF Dashboard, SoSoValue)

Across Thursday and Friday last week, ETH funds attracted $628M in fresh capital while Bitcoin products registered outflows. On a year-to-date basis ETH USD is up +32.6%, nearly double Bitcoin’s +17.3%.

The divergence underscores how quickly traditional finance is reshaping the crypto market. Since the SEC approved spot ETFs in January 2024, Wall Street has become the single largest marginal buyer of digital assets, driving price cycles previously dominated by retail speculation.

Now issuers are pushing to broaden the menu beyond Bitcoin and Ethereum

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Bitwise Tarket LINK Price Growth With New Spot Chainlink Crypto ETF

On Tuesday, Bitwise Asset Management filed an S-1 for a spot Chainlink ETF, with Coinbase Custody Trust named as custodian and Coinbase, Inc. as execution agent.

The product will mirror LINK’s spot price but exclude staking, despite May’s SEC guidance clarifying that staking rewards do not constitute a securities transaction.

Bitwise’s cautious structure suggests issuers are prioritizing regulatory approval speed over potential yield enhancements.

The move follows Grayscale’s application to convert its Avalanche Trust into a spot AVAX ETF, part of an escalating race to secure listings for mid-cap altcoins tied to real-world adoption narratives.

Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan has already described Chainlink as one of the “cleanest” plays on the tokenization trend, with LINK powering oracle infrastructure for DeFi and institutional pilots alike.

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What Does This TradFi News Mean For Retail Crypto Traders?

Together, these developments highlight a decisive shift: the ETF pipeline is no longer confined to Bitcoin and Ether.

Instead, TradFi is laying rails for exposure to the broader altcoin spectrum, with liquidity flows increasingly dictated by institutional asset managers rather than Telegram groups or celebrity endorsements.

For retail traders, the message is stark. The market is being financialized at speed. Ethereum’s path to $7,500, if Standard Chartered’s call proves correct, will not be driven by meme-fuelled hype but by balance sheet allocations and ETF inflows.

And as new single-token ETFs for Chainlink, Avalanche, and others come online, the next altcoin rotation may be dictated not in Discord but on Wall Street trading desks.

The only question left is how quickly retail can adapt to a market now being steered by TradFi capital, and whether the volatility cycles of old will survive this structural change.

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