Bitcoin gets the headlines, but Standard Chartered’s Geoffrey Kendrick thinks the bigger story sits underneath it. The bank’s global head of digital assets research says stablecoins and tokenization are turning some altcoins into real businesses, ones whose fees keep growing while their token prices stay low.
For most of crypto’s history, Kendrick said, the altcoin market moved on speculation. That began to change in mid-2025, when stablecoins found real use. Now some protocols are earning fees from actual activity, and he expects Bitcoin’s share of the market to “gradually come lower” as a result.
Altcoins he is backing
Arbitrum (ARB): the tokenization toll road. Kendrick believes the layer 2 market is consolidating around Arbitrum and Coinbase’s Base. Base has no token, which leaves Arbitrum as the main way to capture that growth. Robinhood already uses Arbitrum’s technology. Kendrick expects other traditional firms to see that and follow, so instead of one Robinhood, Arbitrum could serve four, five or even ten within a year, multiplying its fees.
Chainlink (LINK): the trust layer. Chainlink brings real-world data on-chain and connects different blockchains at institutional grade. When banks and asset managers move assets on-chain, “they want to be able to trust what’s happening,” Kendrick said. That, in his view, is the simple case for LINK.
Uniswap (UNI): fees turning into burns. Activity on Robinhood Chain has driven a sharp rise in Uniswap’s token buyback and burn, faster than Kendrick expected. He said the project has already moved well ahead of his forecast.
Aave (AAVE) and Morpho (MORPHO): on-chain lending. Kendrick sees both as leaders in decentralised lending, a market that grows as more real-world assets move on-chain.
Ethereum (ETH): where tokenization lives. He expects most stablecoin and tokenization activity to happen on Ethereum, and thinks ETH will outperform Bitcoin as its ecosystem captures that growth.
The Amazon comparison
Kendrick likened today’s protocols to Amazon in 1997, when it looked like “this crazy online bookshop” and few understood what it would become. He believes some of these projects will look the same way in hindsight.
“In 10 years from now, people will be looking back and saying, ‘Wow, I wish I bought Arbitrum at 21 cents,’” he said.
