coindesk.com
Standard Chartered started covering Arbitrum’s $ARB token on Tuesday with a forecast that it reaches $10 by the end of 2030, roughly 70 times its current price near 14 cents.
The call rests partly on the revenue Arbitrum earns from helping companies such as Robinhood build their own networks, the bank said in the note.
$ARB has gained nearly 7% in the last 24 hours amid a dip in the broader cryptocurrency market.
Robinhood Chain has pushed Arbitrum’s September revenue toward a roughly $5 million monthly run-rate, more than five times its level before the chain debuted in July, according to Geoffrey Kendrick, Standard Chartered’s global head of digital assets research.
“The recent Robinhood chain launch has demonstrated the potential for Arbitrum to become the number 1 choice for TradFi when bringing assets on-chain,” Kendrick wrote.
There is a catch. $ARB holders currently have no direct claim on that revenue, something Kendrick himself listed among the risks to the call. CoinDesk reported earlier this month that Robinhood Chain pays 10% of its net protocol revenue into the Arbitrum ecosystem, with 8% going to the DAO treasury and 2% to a developer fund. None flows directly to token holders currently.
Read More: Robinhood's new crypto network is printing cash, and it's sending Arbitrum's token soaring
Robinhood Chain’s early growth has also come from a somewhat different crowd than the traditional-financial users behind Kendrick’s longer-term thesis. Memecoin launchpads and trading apps have supplied much of its activity even though the network was built primarily around tokenized stocks and other traditional assets.
Robinhood Chain paid about $360,000 in licensing fees in July, accounting for 35% of Arbitrum DAO income that month. The chain was generating $3.75 million in user fees by Sept. 1 and sending roughly $370,000 to Arbitrum over 24 hours.
Kendrick expects $4 trillion of traditional assets to be tokenized by the end of 2028 and sees Arbitrum capturing a growing share of the infrastructure behind them. He forecasts $ARB at 50 cents by year-end, $1.50 in 2027, $3.50 in 2028, $6.50 in 2029 and $10 in 2030.