Standard Chartered has initiated coverage of Chainlink (LINK) with a price forecast of $200 by the end of 2030, implying a 25x rally from current levels. With LINK trading around $8.25 at the time of the report, the target represents a significant upside potential from the current price. The call comes from a note titled "Chainlink – Owning the rails" by Geoff Kendrick, the bank's digital assets research head, as part of his continuing search for winners of the tokenization trade. The forecast extends Standard Chartered's pattern of aggressive DeFi calls, following previous predictions of a 50x Aave forecast and a 33x Morpho target. According to the latest reports, Standard Chartered expects LINK to reach $13 by the end of 2026 before advancing to $41, $82 and $133 in subsequent years on the path to the $200 target.
Chainlink's LINK token is currently trading around $8.25, down 0.8% over the previous 24 hours according to CoinGecko data. The token remains confined between the lower Bollinger Band at $8.00 and the upper band at $8.75. The latest report notes that LINK's reaction to Standard Chartered's coverage has remained more limited compared to previous DeFi calls, with UNI recording double-digit gains after the bank's earlier coverage. The token continues to trade below the 20-day moving average, which is represented by the middle Bollinger Band at $8.38, indicating that buyers have not yet regained short-term control.
Kendrick expects tokenized assets on-chain to grow from around $340 billion today to $4 trillion by end-2028, with deployed assets in DeFi to increase 37-fold to $2.7 trillion by 2030. According to the latest reports, Standard Chartered estimates that fees generated by Chainlink could increase about 25 times by 2030. The bank's LINK valuation assumes the token price will broadly track that increase in fees. The thesis positions Chainlink as a toll road operator, where each crossing generates fees that feed LINK demand as tokenized assets must cross Chainlink's rails. The forecast also depends on Chainlink retaining its position in the oracle market, with the bank estimating that Chainlink currently secures more than $110 billion in value, representing roughly 70% of oracle-dependent DeFi value globally and more than 80% on Ethereum.
Standard Chartered's forecast is supported by Chainlink's expanding work with traditional financial institutions, where the network can provide data needed to operate tokenized funds, bonds and other financial products. The bank identified Swift, DTCC, Euroclear, JPMorgan, Mastercard, UBS, Fidelity and S&P Global among institutions using Chainlink services. The institutional argument follows several Chainlink projects involving banks and financial market infrastructure. In June, Chainlink joined Project Pangea alongside FairSquareLab, UniKA and Qivalis to test stablecoin-based foreign exchange settlement between Europe and South Korea, involving more than 50 banks representing over $10 trillion in assets under management. Cross-chain infrastructure forms another part of the valuation case, with Chainlink's Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP) quarterly volume reaching $4.9 billion during Q2, an increase of 353% from a year earlier.
Chainlink has added usage through existing DeFi relationships rather than relying only on projects switching infrastructure providers. In July, Aave expanded its use of CCIP by making it the default cross-chain infrastructure for activity across the Aave App and Stable Vaults, extending an existing setup where CCIP already handled transfers of Aave's GHO stablecoin. United Stables adopted Chainlink infrastructure after its U stablecoin surpassed $1 billion in circulating supply and $2.5 billion in daily trading volume. The migration activity follows the $292 million exploit involving KelpDAO's LayerZero-powered bridge in April, with more than $7 billion in token value migrating from legacy bridge infrastructure to Chainlink's CCIP following the incident. Aave V3 alone accounts for about 44% of the value secured by Chainlink, demonstrating the network's market dominance.
