Standard Chartered expects decentralized finance (DeFi) lending protocol Morpho's native token to outperform both Bitcoin and Ether through the end of the decade, with its forecast implying roughly 33 times upside from current levels.
MORPHO Token May Rise 33x by 2030 on DeFi Lending Growth, StanChart Says
1 July 2026 - 19:19 CEST
By Jona Jaupi
The investment bank initiated coverage of the MORPHO token on 1 Jul, assigning it a $60 price target for 2030. It also forecast Bitcoin (BTC) would reach $500,000 and Ether (ETH) $40,000 by the end of the decade, but said the Morpho protocol stands to benefit more from the long-term expansion of decentralized lending.
MORPHO is currently up more than 15% over the past 24 hours on the news, trading at around $2.15 as of 15:48UTC on 1 Jul.
Standard Chartered added that it expects the amount of money and assets deployed across decentralized finance protocols to grow 37 times by the end of 2030. This growth could in turn drive more use of lending protocols such as Morpho.
The report comes as traditional financial institutions continue expanding their use of blockchain technology. While a lot of that activity has focused on tokenized assets and stablecoins, the firm said DeFi lending protocols could also benefit as more financial assets move onchain.
The tokenized asset market has grown to about $36.3bn, according to RWA.xyz. Meanwhile, stablecoins have reached a market capitalization of more than $311bn.
One of DeFi's largest lending protocols
Morpho is a decentralized lending platform that allows users to lend and borrow crypto assets without traditional intermediaries. The smart contracts are deployed on the Ethereum and Base blockchains.
The protocol currently holds about $6.5bn in total value locked (TVL), making it the third-largest DeFi protocol behind Lido and Aave, according to DeFiLlama. Morpho also accounts for around 18% of all assets locked across lending protocols.
"Given its status as one of the largest DeFi lending protocols and its comfortable financial position (it just raised $175 million in VC funding), we think Morpho can scale to meet the expanding base of assets deployed in DeFi," Geoff Kendrick, Standard Chartered's head of digital assets research, wrote in the report.
Institutions are key
Standard Chartered also said that Morpho's biggest opportunity lies in its Vaults business, which provides entities with the infrastructure they need to launch and manage onchain lending and investment products.
Specifically, users can deposit assets into a vault, which automatically lends them according to a preset strategy using smart contracts. Funds can be withdrawn at any time without giving custody of assets to a third party.
However, achieving those long-term growth targets will depend on Morpho's ability to attract more traditional financial institutions and tokenized assets.
Building deeper relationships with banks and asset managers will be both a challenge and an opportunity over the next few years. "We think this is achievable," the report reads.
