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Standard Chartered Puts Morpho on Track for $60 by 2030

Standard Chartered sees Morpho as one of the key DeFi lending protocols and expects institutional inflows through vaults to keep driving the project through 2030.

By Mike Hesp
• 2 min read
Standard Chartered Puts Morpho on Track for $60 by 2030

Key Takeaways

  • Standard Chartered has started coverage of Morpho and set a $60 price target for the end of 2030.
  • The bank sees a step-by-step path from $3.50 in 2026 to $40 in 2029.
  • According to Standard Chartered, Morpho stands out in DeFi because of its vaults, with room for more institutional inflows.

Standard Chartered has begun covering Morpho with a $60 (€53) price target for the end of 2030. That implies almost 30x upside from current levels and signals how seriously the bank is treating DeFi as a long-term investment theme.

Morpho was trading near $2.05 (€1.80) and had gained more than 10 percent on the day the report came out. At the time of writing, the token is changing hands around $2.08 (€1.83), while Bitcoin and Ethereum are trading at about $58,452 (€51,300) and $1,567.81 (€1,380), respectively.

Bank Sees a Growth Path

In Standard Chartered analyst Geoff Kendrick’s view, Morpho could rise in a series of steps: $3.50 (€3.07) in 2026, $11 (€9.65) in 2027, $22 (€19) in 2028, $40 (€35) in 2029, and $60 (€53) in 2030. On that timeline, the bank expects Morpho to outperform both Bitcoin and Ethereum over the same period.

The call also fits into a broader pattern in the bank’s recent crypto coverage. Standard Chartered cut its Ethereum target last month, but only weeks earlier it had issued a much more aggressive 50x forecast for Aave. Together, those calls suggest the bank sees DeFi protocols as a major investable segment in crypto.

Why Morpho Stands Out

Morpho is now the second-largest DeFi lending protocol after Aave. Between the two, they account for 57 percent of deposits and 63 percent of active loans across lending protocols, underscoring how competitive this part of DeFi has become.

Standard Chartered splits Morpho into two main pieces: Morpho Markets, which operates in a similar way to Aave, and Morpho Vaults, which the bank describes as infrastructure for on-chain asset managers, or curators. The vaults are the feature the bank thinks could attract larger TradFi flows onchain.

The bank expects DeFi assets to expand 37 times by 2030. Morpho is expected to ride that wave, although Standard Chartered also notes that the growth may come in bursts and will depend on how quickly institutional players step in.

Relevant for European Readers

For European crypto investors, the main takeaway is that a major traditional bank is no longer treating DeFi as a niche corner of the market. Instead, it is framing the sector as one with real institutional infrastructure behind it. Morpho now has about $9.8 billion (€8.6 billion) in deposits, and firms including Fireblocks, Anchorage, and Taurus have already integrated the vaults into their systems. That makes the pace of capital and custody moving into onchain lending an increasingly important question for the wider crypto market.

Standard Chartered also laid out a similarly bullish case for Aave earlier, reinforcing the idea that the bank sees DeFi lending as a broader growth story.

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