Standard Chartered Initiates Coverage on BNB Token, Forecasting Price to Climb to $2775 by 2028

BNB has traded almost exactly in line with an unweighted basket of Bitcoin and Ethereum since May 2021 in terms of both returns and volatility

Standard Chartered has started coverage of Binance's BNB token, setting a price target of $2,775 by the end of 2028 – a gain of over 360% from current levels.

"BNB has traded almost exactly in-line with an unweighted basket of Bitcoin and Ethereum since May 2021 in terms of both return and volatility," Geoffrey Kendrick, the bank's global head of digital assets research, said in a report published Tuesday and seen by The Block. "We expect this relationship to continue to hold, driving BNB's price from around $600 currently to $2,775 by end-2028."

Kendricks sees BNB as a benchmark-like asset in the crypto market. While it may underperform BTC and ETH both in real terms and as measured by market cap in circulation, BNB's deflationary nature and its link to Binance's centralized exchange support its long-term value, according to Kendrick.

'BNB Chain is highly centralised relative to other chains'

BNB Chain, Binance's Layer 1 blockchain, uses a consensus model called "proof of staked authority," where just 45 validators are elected every 24 hours based on staked token amounts. This setup makes BNB Chain far more centralized than peer networks like Ethereum, which has over a million validators, Kendrick said.

BNB Chain's centralized structure and stagnant use cases since the 2021 DeFi boom have resulted in very low developer activity compared to peers like Avalanche and Ethereum, Kendrick noted. He added that upgrades such as the recent Pascal hard fork and the upcoming Maxwell upgrade in June could help improve developer engagement over time.

Still, the BNB token maintains strong user demand, supported by its integration with Binance's centralized exchange, where token holders receive trading fee discounts based on their BNB balance and volume, Kendrick said. This exchange-linked utility, along with the dominance of decentralized exchanges like PancakeSwap within BNB Chain, has helped the BNB Chain retain activity even as competition from other ecosystems like Solana grows, Kendrick noted.

BNB also benefits from a deflationary supply model and token burn mechanisms, Kendrick said. The token currently trades "rich" on Standard Chartered's preferred valuation metric for smart contract Layer 1 platforms – market cap-to-GDP – likely due to both its exchange tie-ins and its deflationary nature, Kendrick said.

Kendrick has made a string of crypto predictions in recent months. He expects bitcoin to reach $200,000 by the end of 2025 and $500,000 by the end of 2028. Kendrick sees Avalanche's AVAX token climb more than tenfold to $250 by 2029 and sees XRP hitting $12.50 by 2028, representing a gain of over 500%.

Meanwhile, he revised his ether forecast downward, setting a 2025 target of $4,000. He also anticipates a surge in stablecoin adoption, projecting the total market to approach $2 trillion by the end of 2028.

Kendrick told The Block last month that neither he nor Standard Chartered’s crypto research team holds any digital assets.