Standard Chartered just dropped a major research note on Aave, and the bullish thesis is hard to ignore.

The bank's global head of digital assets, Geoff Kendrick, says tokenized real-world assets flowing into DeFi could drive massive new deposits into Aave. At its October 2025 peak, Aave held $75 billion in deposits — enough to rank alongside the 30th largest US bank by deposits.

The April KelpDAO cybertheft ($292M) and broader market decline hit Aave hard, but Standard Chartered thinks both headwinds are fading. They forecast "significant upside" for digital asset prices by year-end.

Their earlier note projected DeFi total value locked could hit $2.7 trillion by 2030, driven primarily by RWAs and crypto-native assets moving onchain. Aave would be a natural beneficiary as tokenized assets become collateral sources.

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#DeFi #Tokenization #RWAs #Crypto #Blockchain