Standard Chartered has initiated coverage of Morpho with a $60 end-2030 price target, saying its DeFi lending and onchain infrastructure businesses are well positioned to benefit from the growth of tokenized assets.
The investment bank began coverage of Morpho, describing the protocol as a dual-purpose DeFi platform that combines a lending marketplace with infrastructure designed for onchain banks and institutional asset managers.
It set a $60 price target for MORPHO by 2030, implying roughly 33x upside from current levels and suggesting the token could outperform both bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH) over the period.
MORPHO was trading up more than 13% in the past 24 hours at around $2.13 at the time of publication.
“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,” wrote Geoff Kendrick, head of digital assets research at Standard Chartered, in a Wednesday note.
Decentralized finance has gained momentum over the past year as institutional interest in tokenized real-world assets and onchain lending has increased. Growth in stablecoin adoption and renewed demand for crypto credit have supported lending protocols, while infrastructure providers enabling institutional participation onchain have become one of the fastest-growing segments of the industry.
Kendrick noted that Morpho operates through two core segments: Morpho Markets, a lending protocol that has grown to roughly one-quarter the size of Aave by deposits, and Morpho Vaults, which provides infrastructure for onchain asset management and banking applications.
He said this dual structure positions Morpho to benefit as DeFi evolves beyond crypto-native lending into institutional and tokenized asset use cases.
Standard Chartered expects assets on Morpho to expand broadly in line with its forecast for a 37x increase in total DeFi assets by 2030, supported by the protocol’s strong balance sheet following its $175 million fundraising round.
The bank added that Morpho’s long-term growth will depend on the success of its Vaults segment in attracting institutional capital and traditional financial assets onchain. While integration with traditional finance may be challenging, it also represents a significant opportunity as tokenization continues to accelerate.
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