Standard Chartered Bets on Ethereum Over BTC

Welcome to the US Crypto News Morning Briefing—your essential rundown of the most important developments in crypto for the day ahead.

Grab a coffee for today’s read, as Standard Chartered adjusts its plumbing, focusing on how it structures exposure, where it places risk, and which assets it believes will matter most when the next institutional wave arrives.

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Crypto News of the Day: Standard Chartered’s Crypto Bet Could Outsmart Basel III Capital Rules

Standard Chartered’s reported plans to establish a crypto prime brokerage may reveal more than a renewed push into digital assets.

By housing the initiative within its venture arm, SC Ventures, the bank appears to be engineering a way into institutional crypto markets while sidestepping one of the sector’s biggest barriers: Basel III’s punitive capital treatment.

Citing people familiar with the matter, Bloomberg reported that the London-based lender is exploring a crypto prime brokerage offering, which would provide financing, custody, and trading services to institutional clients.

The business is expected to sit outside the bank’s core corporate and investment banking division, instead operating under SC Ventures. That structural decision could materially reduce the capital burden associated with crypto exposure.

Under Basel III rules finalized in late 2022, banks face a 1,250% risk weighting for “permissionless” crypto assets such as Bitcoin and Ether.

Because this charge is far higher than the 400% applied to some venture capital investments, it effectively discourages banks from holding crypto on their balance sheets.

By routing crypto activities through a venture-style unit, Standard Chartered may be positioning itself closer to a capital-light framework while remaining within regulatory boundaries.

The move aligns with the bank’s broader crypto strategy. Standard Chartered backs institutional platforms, including Zodia Custody and Zodia Markets, and became the first global systemically important bank to offer spot crypto trading to institutional clients last year.

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SC Ventures has also disclosed work on Project37C, a digital-asset joint venture described as a “light financing and markets platform” spanning custody, tokenization, and market access.

Why Ethereum Anchors Standard Chartered’s Institutional Outlook

The bank’s research outlook reinforces this institutional positioning. In a recent note, Standard Chartered Head of Digital Assets Research Geoff Kendrick said Ethereum is increasingly likely to outperform Bitcoin, even as weaker-than-expected BTC performance weighs on the broader digital asset market.

Kendrick cited continued buying by the largest Ethereum-focused digital asset treasury company, Ethereum’s dominance in stablecoins, real-world assets, and decentralized finance, and progress on plans to increase Ethereum’s layer-1 throughput by tenfold.

Kendrick also pointed to regulation as a potential catalyst. The passage of the US CLARITY Act, which would establish a clearer framework for digital assets, could particularly benefit Ethereum by unlocking further development of DeFi.

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While Standard Chartered lowered its ETH-USD forecasts for 2026–2028 due to broader market weakness, it raised longer-term expectations, projecting that ETH could reach $40,000 by the end of 2030.

Taken together, the bank’s market structure strategy and research outlook point to a coherent institutional thesis. Prime brokerage is emerging as a critical layer of crypto market infrastructure as institutional participation accelerates.

Standard Chartered’s approach highlights a growing tension between regulatory intent and market reality. As global regulators debate revisiting crypto capital rules, banks are already finding ways to participate without waiting for reform.

If successful, Standard Chartered’s SC Ventures-led expansion could become a template for how global banks engage with crypto, quietly reshaping institutional adoption through structure.

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