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The price of Ethereum has surged 32% in August, with Standard Chartered targeting $4,000 as ETF inflows and a weaker Dollar revive the bull case.
The Ethereum to US Dollar (ETH/USD) exchange rate has surged back towards $2,470 after one of its most dramatic advances of the year, transforming a market that was stuck below $1,900 little more than a week ago.
ETH has gained more than 32% in August, reaching $2,541.89 at its monthly high after trading as low as $1,824.11.
The speed of the move is remarkable enough; the change in the institutional backdrop may matter more.
US spot Ether ETFs attracted $697.2m last week, their strongest weekly inflow since October 2025, while trading volume jumped 259% to $6.9bn.
ETF assets climbed to $14.3bn from $10.5bn as both new money and the rally in ETH lifted valuations.
That marks quite a reversal from the weak ETF demand which prompted several institutional forecasters to slash their Ethereum targets earlier this summer.
Ethereum spent much of early August trapped around $1,850-$1,950 before breaking violently higher, with the latest surge carrying ETH more than $600 above its rising 20-day moving average.
Standard Chartered Ethereum Forecast: $4,000 by Year-End
Standard Chartered remains one of the more bullish banks on Ethereum and maintains an end-2026 target of $4,000, implying roughly 60% upside from current levels.
Its longer-term forecast is considerably more adventurous, with the bank projecting ETH at $40,000 by the end of 2030.
Geoff Kendrick, Standard Chartered’s Global Head of Digital Assets Research, argues that Ethereum’s price has been lagging improvements taking place underneath the surface.
“ETH will catch up to the internal metrics, it is just a matter of time,” Kendrick said.
The bank points particularly to transaction volumes, total value locked, stablecoins and tokenised real-world assets.
Standard Chartered estimates that Ethereum hosts around 54% of stablecoins and roughly 62% of tokenised non-stablecoin real-world assets, giving the network a potentially powerful advantage if institutional tokenisation expands as expected.
Kendrick expects the stablecoin market itself to grow to around $2tn by 2028, while the tokenised RWA sector could expand on a similar scale.
“If RWAs multiply by 50x over the next few years as we expect, the importance of this sector to Ethereum is set to increase dramatically,” Kendrick said.
There is also fresh development activity behind the investment story.
The Ethereum Foundation launched its Platåberget testnet this month as an early testing environment for the forthcoming Glamsterdam upgrade, including substantial changes to block building and gas pricing.
Tom Lee: Ethereum’s Breakout Was “Overdue”
BitMine chairman Tom Lee is even more enthusiastic about the latest move.
BitMine bought another 32,447 ETH last week, taking its holdings above 5.84 million ETH, equivalent to almost 5% of Ethereum’s circulating supply.
“We believe this upside move in ETH was overdue given the strengthening fundamentals in crypto,” Lee said.
He also highlighted a curious historical pattern: weekly Ethereum gains above 30% have been rare, with the previous examples in May 2025 and July 2021 preceding significantly larger moves.
“We expect easing financial conditions to be a tailwind for crypto,” Lee added.
The macro catalyst is familiar from the recent Bitcoin and gold rallies.
The US Treasury’s decision to double some longer-dated bond buybacks initially pushed Treasury yields lower and weakened the Dollar, while investors interpreted the intervention as another reason to own scarce or non-fiat assets.
Reuters reported that Ethereum joined Bitcoin and crypto-linked equities in rallying after the Treasury announcement, with renewed momentum around US digital-asset legislation adding another tailwind.
Ethereum Price Prediction: $2,800, $3,050 and $3,400 Next?
The immediate technical picture has changed almost beyond recognition.
Reuters market analyst Christopher Romano identifies the April monthly high around $2,464.54 as the important breakout area, which ETH is now testing after Monday’s move above $2,500.
A sustained break opens an initial target around $2,775-$2,825, followed by $3,040-$3,070 and potentially $3,400-$3,450.
There is a catch after such a steep rise.
Momentum is already overbought, and Reuters sees scope for a period of consolidation between roughly $2,200 and $2,450 if buyers cannot immediately extend the breakout.
A fall beneath $2,200 would materially weaken the new bullish structure.
That makes the next few sessions rather more interesting than another straight extrapolation of last week’s chart would suggest.
When we looked at Ethereum’s technical picture in January, $2,300 was being discussed as a downside zone following a sharp sell-off.
ETH has now come all the way back through that area from below, although it remains almost 50% beneath the record high near $4,954 reached in August 2025.
Citi and TD Cowen Forecasts Have Already Been Overtaken
Not every institutional forecast looks bullish after the latest surge.
Citi cut its 12-month Ethereum forecast to $2,240 from $3,175 in July, largely because it assumed net crypto ETF inflows would fall to zero over the following twelve months.
Ethereum has already moved above that target.
More importantly, the return of $697m in weekly Ether ETF inflows directly challenges one of the assumptions behind Citi’s downgrade.
TD Cowen took a similar step at the end of July, cutting its end-2026 ETH forecast to $2,371 from roughly $3,650.
The brokerage also projected $3,347 for 2027, $4,554 for 2028 and $5,969 for 2029, arguing that slower regulatory progress around tokenised assets justified a more cautious near-term path.
Again, spot has already overtaken that 2026 target.
This is one of those occasions where the disagreement between forecasts is more useful than pretending there is a consensus.
Standard Chartered sees $4,000 this year, TD Cowen had $2,371 and Citi’s 12-month target is $2,240, while current technical momentum has already pushed ETH to around $2,470.
Ethereum Outlook: Is $3,000 Now the Real Test?
The flow data make the bullish case stronger than it was at the beginning of August, but there is still a distinction between a powerful short squeeze and a durable institutional accumulation cycle.
Last week’s $697.2m ETF inflow was impressive, yet US Ether ETFs remain around $192m in net outflow for 2026 as a whole.
That needs to keep improving.
For now, the first hurdle is whether ETH can establish itself above $2,465-$2,500 rather than immediately surrendering last week’s gains.
Above there, $2,800 and then $3,000 become realistic technical objectives, while Standard Chartered’s $4,000 forecast would start looking considerably less remote.
Below $2,200, the market would have to ask whether the spectacular August move was primarily a positioning squeeze after all.
UK readers can also follow the rally through our live Ethereum price in Pound Sterling, where we previously saw ETH/GBP fall towards 1,400 in our February Ethereum forecast before the latest recovery changed the picture considerably.
Source: www.exchangerates.org.uk