Standard Chartered’s Geoff Kendrick on Friday said tokenization has already won, and XRP (CRYPTO: XRP) isn’t where he’s putting the bet.

The Shift From Bitcoin to Altcoins

Kendrick told the Milk Road podcast that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s recent announcement on long-end bond buybacks confirmed the cycle bottom, echoing the same signal that marked last October’s top. 

He draws a sharp comparison to Amazon’s (NASDAQ:AMZN) 2001 crash from $113 to $6, when internal metrics kept improving even as the stock collapsed. 

Crypto just went through the same disconnect, in his view, and tokenization-linked altcoins are where that improvement should finally show up in price.

Why Revenue Suddenly Matters

Crypto is moving from a world where revenue didn’t matter to one where it’s the only thing that does, Kendrick argues, much like Mag 7 stocks today. 

Over the past six months he’s built discounted cash flow models for individual projects, a shift tied directly to stablecoins proving blockchain can replace real-world financial infrastructure. 

Two forecasts anchor his thesis: stablecoins reaching $2 trillion, and tokenized assets reaching that same mark, up from roughly $40 billion currently.

Four Altcoins at the Center of the Thesis

TokenTargetTimelineKey Catalyst
Uniswap (CRYPTO: UNI)$1002030Fee switch burn rate stabilized at 3-4% after price tripled
Aave (CRYPTO: AAVE)$3,5002030Recovered fast from $300M hack via $300M industry backstop
Arbitrum (CRYPTO: ARB)$10 (~70x)2030Robinhood Chain 5x’d monthly revenue to $4-5M
Chainlink (CRYPTO: LINK)$2002030Near-monopoly on bringing reliable data on-chain
Source: Milk Road Podcast

The Thesis Behind Each Target

  • Uniswap — $100 target for 2030
    • Fee switch activated last December kicked off buybacks and burns
    • Burn rate stabilized near 3% to 4% annually once price tripled
    • Already blew past Kendrick’s $6.50 June target
  • Aave — $3,500 target by 2030
    • Survived a $300 million exploit tied to its Kelp integration
    • Industry raised $300 million largely in ETH to backstop the protocol
    • Near-term $180 target already looks conservative with price near $170
  • Arbitrum — $10 target, roughly 70x upside
    • Robinhood (NASDAQ:HOOD) Chain multiplied monthly revenue from $1 million to $4-5 million
    • Token already up more than 60% since the call was published
    • More platforms expected to replicate the Robinhood Chain setup
  • Chainlink — $200 target by 2030
    • Near-impregnable moat as the only end-to-end platform for bringing data on-chain
    • Has quietly stockpiled several hundred million dollars worth of its own token

Ethereum’s Case Against Bitcoin

Kendrick’s targets for Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH) sit at $4,000 by year-end and $40,000 by 2030, with the ETH/BTC ratio expected to climb from roughly 3% today to 8% by 2030. 

For Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC), he’s holding his $100,000 year-end target and flags Oct/ 6, the anniversary of last year’s all-time high, as a potential buying window for cycle-theory traders.

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