Chainlink’s leverage rises as Standard Chartered sets $200 target

Standard Chartered just handed Chainlink a very credible vote of confidence. The bank’s global head of digital assets research, Geoff Kendrick, initiated coverage of LINK on August 10 with a long-term price target of $200 by end-2030, roughly 25 times the token’s current trading levels around $8. The market’s immediate reaction was predictable in the way these things go: derivatives traders moved fast while spot buyers were more cautious. Open interest jumped 16% to approximately $694 million, and futures trading volume more than doubled, surging 123% to around $1 billion. LINK’s spot price moved up about 4.5% to roughly $8.67 before pushing intraday toward $9.56. Why Standard Chartered is betting big on tokenization Kendrick’s analysis centers on asset tokenization, the process of putting real-world assets like bonds, real estate, and funds onto blockchains as digital tokens. Standard Chartered projects that market will grow to $4 trillion, and the argument is that Chainlink sits at a critical chokepoint in that infrastructure. Kendrick’s report specifically calls out Chainlink’s Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol, known as CCIP, as a key piece of the thesis. As tokenized asset...