Institutional investors are bullish on Ethereum, anticipating a $26,000 ETH

Adoption of layer-2 scaling protocols has surged with the spike in Ethereum gas prices. ETH layer-2 protocols are processing over 250,000 transactions per day, exceeding Bitcoin’s count. 

Leading global bank is bullish on Ethereum, values Ethereum between $26,000 to $35,000

Standard Chartered, a British multinational banking giant headquartered in London, recently published a report on the top two cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin and Ethereum. The report shares insights on structural considerations and the economic use case for Ether, and three Standard Chartered Bank researchers believe that: 

While potential returns may be greater for ETH than for BTC, risks are also higher.

The banking giant's analysts said,

Structurally, we value Ethereum at $26,000-$35,000.

As the altcoin is consolidating, falling close to 20% on Tuesday, it is interesting to note that traditional finance proponents have a bullish outlook on Ether. 

Sam Trabucco, CEO of Alameda Research, shared his thoughts on the dip in Ethereum prices. Trabucco points out that the setup pre-correction is nearly the same every time. Futures contracts trade at a high premium, indicating aggressive buying. This setup is closely followed by a steep price correction that offers traders the opportunity to buy the dip. 

Another factor likely to have triggered the dip is the steep increase in transaction fees on the Ethereum network. Founder Vitalik Buterin related this to the rise in non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on the Ethereum blockchain and proposed a few solutions to tackle the challenge. 

Vitalik Buterin suggests moving NFTs to layer-two solutions entirely to tackle high gas fees  

Buterin shared his thoughts on the Ethereum Research blog, where he proposed non-fungible tokens be moved entirely to scaling solutions. Buterin notes that existing Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) capable rollup platforms have backdoors and a certain degree of centralization; therefore, until there is a better solution, NFTs should be cross-rollup friendly. 

This implies that NFTs should move across the entire layer-2 ecosystem with ease until a single rollup tackles the challenge of centralization and resolves security issues. 

Buterin's suggestions have sparked a new debate in the crypto community. However, this has opened up further growth avenues for layer-2 scaling solutions. 

Evan Van Ness, the founder of Week In Ethereum News, tweeted about the increasing transactions on Ethereum layer-2 solutions and how they already exceed Bitcoin in trade volume.

Flippening of the Bitcoin network has become relevant yet again, with the Ethereum layer-2 ecosystem exceeding daily transactions. Overall, despite the correction in Ether's price, developments in the Ethereum ecosystem are driving a bullish outlook on the altcoin's price.

FXStreet analysts predict that the altcoin is breaking out toward the $4,000 level.