In a report published on Wednesday, Standard Chartered initiated coverage for MORPHO, the native coin of Morpho – a decentralized platform that allows users to earn yield and borrow assets. As a result, MORPHO jumped by more than 10 percent over the past 24 hours.
Standard Chartered sets ambitious MORPHO target
Geoff Kendrick, the head of digital asset research at Standard Chartered, forecasted that MORPHO token could increase by 30 times by 2030 – potentially reaching a price level of $60 from its current price of $2.08.
The coin has seen a price appreciation of more than 34 percent over the past week, jumping from roughly $1.62. In the report, Kendrick noted a yearly path for MORPHO – at $3.50 in 2026, $11 in 2027, $22 in 2028, $40 in 2029 and $60 in 2030.
The extraordinary price prediction begs the question, why MORPHO? According to Standard Chartered, Morpho is uniquely positioned in that it is the second-largest DeFi lending protocol, trailing Aave.
Taken together, Aave and Morpho command 57 percent of deposits across DeFi protocols. They are also responsible for roughly 63 percent of loans across lending protocols. The following chart from DefiLlama puts things in perspective, with Aave and Morpho’s cumulative total value locked (TVL) around $18.5 billion.
Standard Chartered’s bullish thesis for Morpho hinges on 2 key factors – Morpho Markets working like Aave, and Morpho Vaults functioning as infrastructure of on-chain asset managers or curators.
The banking giant highlighted Morpho Vaults as the differentiator that holds the potential to have a pull-effect on traditional finance funds and bring them on-chain. The bank, which has already predicted DeFi assets to grow 37 times by 2030, expects Morpho to play a pivotal role in the growth.
Will DeFi finally have its time?
Since the DeFi summer of 2020, the crypto sub-vertical has been rather quiet. The DeFi space has consistently found itself at the receiving end of high-profile hacks, resulting in the loss of funds worth billions of dollars.
That said, recent developments suggest that a positive turnaround might just be on the horizon for DeFi.
On June 24, Standard Chartered shared its bullish outlook for Aave, saying that the top DeFi lending protocol appears to have moved past the unfortunate Kelp DAO incident back in April.
Similarly, on June 15, the bank forecasted a 40 times surge for decentralized exchange Uniswap’s UNI token by 2030.
