Standard Chartered has initiated coverage of Chainlink (LINK) with a price forecast of $200 by the end of 2030. With LINK trading near $8.22 on Monday, the target implies a 24x rally.

The call comes from a note titled “Chainlink – Owning the rails” by Geoff Kendrick, the bank’s digital assets research head. It extends his continuing search for winners of the tokenization trade.

A $4 Trillion Tokenization Bet

Kendrick expects tokenized assets on-chain to grow from around $340 billion today to $4 trillion by end-2028. He also sees $2.7 trillion of assets active in decentralized finance (DeFi) by end-2030, a 37-fold jump.

The Chainlink call fits a pattern in the bank’s recent research. Standard Chartered previously published a 50x Aave forecast and a 33x Morpho target built on the same DeFi growth thesis.

According to Kendrick, tokenized assets cannot scale on issuance alone. Once on-chain, they still need trusted data, secure transfers between networks, and compliance tooling to reach institutional use.

In effect, the thesis reads like a toll road argument. If tokenized assets must cross Chainlink’s rails, each crossing generates fees, and those fees feed LINK demand.

Why Standard Chartered Says Chainlink Owns the Rails

The bank calls Chainlink the market leader in bringing data on-chain through decentralized oracles. Oracles feed outside information, such as prices, to blockchains. Per the note, the network secures around 70% of DeFi markets globally and more than 80% on Ethereum.

Standard Chartered also credits Chainlink with enabling over $32 trillion in transaction value across seven years of operation. The bank argues this track record creates network effects that competitors struggle to match.

Meanwhile, the project has expanded beyond data feeds into interoperability, compliance, and privacy services for traditional finance (TradFi). Chainlink already works with Fidelity on a project to tokenize fund data covering $6.9 billion in assets.

“These assets will require trusted data, secure interoperability between networks, privacy-preserving compliance, and integration with existing financial systems; only Chainlink is currently equipped to provide all of these,” Kendrick wrote in the note.

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The Risks Behind the 24x Target

For LINK holders, the thesis converts network usage into fees and, in turn, token demand. However, LINK still trades near $8.22, close to the $8 reference price Kendrick used in the note.

The bank’s coverage can move prices in the short term. For instance, Aave jumped 15% after Standard Chartered’s earlier DeFi call, even as the broader market weakened.

Kendrick also flags clear risks. Slower institutional tokenization, competition from specialist providers, and technical setbacks could each derail the path to $200.

Therefore, the long-term LINK outlook rests on tokenization moving from pilots into production at scale.

The debate this note opens is a sharper one. Does Chainlink become the SWIFT of tokenized finance, collecting a fee on every crossing, or another bold bank call the market never validates?

Source: BeInCrypto