Standard Chartered Bank: Long ETH with BMNR before the weekend has a good risk-reward ratio

BlockBeats News, January 23rd, according to CoinDesk, despite a strong start to the year, Ethereum and the entire crypto market experienced a pullback this week. However, Geoff Kendrick, Head of Digital Asset Research at Standard Chartered Bank, still sees reasons to remain bullish. During the early U.S. trading session on Friday, ETH was trading at around $2,912, down about 12% for the week and turned into a 1.7% decline since the beginning of the year. As the largest current enterprise Ethereum holder, Tom Lee's BitMine (BMNR) saw its stock price drop nearly 9% this week, expanding its year-to-date decline to about 10%.

Kendrick pointed out that Ethereum's network activity has surged in recent weeks, with transaction volume hitting a record high, mainly thanks to the December Fusaka upgrade that brought increased capacity. He stated that the surge in usage marks a difference from past cycles, where previous upgrades failed to drive sustained network growth. Unlike past upgrades, Fusaka appears to be alleviating previous bottlenecks, allowing more users and developers to smoothly complete transactions. This capacity upgrade distinguishes the current wave of growth from previous ones.

Kendrick noted that BitMine has shown no signs of slowing down its Ethereum purchases, and Tom Lee outlined the company's plans for more acquisitions in an annual shareholder meeting last week. The macroeconomic environment has also played a positive role. The elimination of Greenland-related tariff risks, the rebound in the Japanese bond market earlier this week after a panic sell-off, and the increasing likelihood of BlackRock's fixed-income chief Rick Rieder becoming the next Fed chair, all bode well for risk assets. This should be positive for cryptocurrencies, and going long on ETH and BMNR over the weekend seems to offer a good risk/reward ratio.