Ethereum’s (ETH) current market weakness resembles Amazon during the aftermath of the dot-com crash, according to a note from Standard Chartered’s Geoffrey Kendrick, who argued that the asset’s internal network metrics continue improving even as ETH price performance lags sharply behind.

Kendrick on Thursday compared Ethereum’s current position to comments Jeff Bezos made years after Amazon’s stock collapsed during the 2001 tech bust.

“The stock is not the company. And the company is not the stock,” Bezos said in a 2018 speech reflecting on Amazon’s post-dotcom recovery. “While the stock price was going the wrong way, everything inside the company was going the right way.”

Kendrick said the same dynamic now applies to Ethereum.

The note arrives as ETH remains under pressure relative to both Bitcoin (BTC) and its own prior cycle highs. Ethereum has fallen 57% from its August 2025 peak to roughly $2,100, while the ETH-BTC ratio has declined 37% over the same period.

Standard Chartered Says Ethereum’s Fundamentals Continue Improving

Despite the price weakness, Standard Chartered argued Ethereum’s internal metrics remain strong.

Transaction counts and total value locked measured in ETH terms remain near all-time highs, according to the report.

Kendrick argued the divergence between network activity and token price mirrors the disconnect Amazon experienced when its stock collapsed while the underlying business continued expanding during the early internet era.

The bank reaffirmed its long-term Ethereum forecasts:

$4,000 by end-2026 $10,000 by end-2027 $18,000 by end-2028 $40,000 by end-2030

That would place the ETH-BTC ratio back near its 2021 highs around 0.08.

Kendrick also noted that Amazon’s stock, adjusted for splits, eventually rose roughly 1,000-fold from its post-dotcom lows.

Stablecoins And Tokenized Assets Are Becoming Ethereum’s Core Bull Case

The report shifts Ethereum’s investment narrative away from speculative trading cycles and toward financial infrastructure.

Standard Chartered projects the stablecoin market will grow sixfold by the end of 2028. The bank also forecasts tokenized real-world assets excluding stablecoins will expand 50 times over the same period.

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Ethereum currently dominates both sectors, hosting approximately 50% to 65% of stablecoin and tokenized real-world asset activity, according to the note.

Those segments now account for more than half of the total value locked on Ethereum.

The implication is that Ethereum may increasingly function as the base settlement layer for tokenized finance rather than simply a smart contract chain competing for retail activity.

That positioning becomes more significant as traditional financial institutions continue experimenting with tokenized treasuries, onchain money markets, stablecoin settlement rails, and blockchain-based asset issuance.

Ethereum’s Price Weakness Comes As Institutional Adoption Expands

Ethereum’s underperformance against Bitcoin has frustrated investors throughout much of the current cycle. Spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds attracted the majority of institutional inflows in 2025 and early 2026, while Ethereum lagged in relative performance.

However, Kendrick argued the market may be underestimating Ethereum’s role in the broader migration of financial infrastructure onto blockchain networks.

The report stated that traditional finance equivalents moving onchain are likely to disproportionately benefit Ethereum because of its existing dominance in stablecoins and tokenized assets.

That thesis increasingly positions Ethereum less as a speculative technology trade and more as foundational infrastructure for digital capital markets.

The Amazon Comparison Reflects A Broader Shift In Ethereum’s Narrative

The Bezos comparison may resonate because it reframes Ethereum’s current weakness as a valuation disconnect rather than evidence of deteriorating fundamentals.

Amazon survived the collapse of the early internet bubble because its internal business metrics continued strengthening even while investor sentiment deteriorated.

Standard Chartered argues Ethereum is now experiencing a similar phase.

“ETH will catch up to the internal metrics,” Kendrick wrote. “It is just a matter of time.”

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