Standard Chartered Says Sky’s SKY Token Could Rise Fivefold by End-2028
Summary
- Standard Chartered said SKY token could rise fivefold from current levels to $0.325 by the end of 2028.
- Sky issues USDS and DAI and lends funds to agents at wholesale rates, with the agents’ combined borrowing limit standing at $17.5 billion.
- Kendrick said the value accruing to SKY holders could increase fivefold if Sky expands its financial buffer and maintains its staking yield, though uncertainty remains over demand for yield-bearing stablecoins.
Forecast Trend Report by Period
Standard Chartered said SKY, the native token of decentralized finance platform Sky, could rise fivefold from current levels by the end of 2028.
Crypto media outlet The Block reported on September 11 that Geoffrey Kendrick, the bank’s head of digital assets research, said in a note that SKY could climb to $0.325 by the end of 2028 from about $0.065 currently.
Kendrick described Sky as “the central bank of DeFi.” Sky issues the stablecoins USDS and DAI and lends funds to agents at wholesale rates. In the off-chain world, Sky would be equivalent to a central bank, while the agents would resemble commercial banks that borrow at wholesale rates and deploy the capital.
Sky’s main agents are Spark, Grove and Obex. Together, they have borrowed and are managing $5.9 billion of USDS. Spark focuses on crypto lending through protocols including Aave and Morpho. Grove allocates capital to real-world asset products from BlackRock, Janus Henderson and Apollo. Obex is responsible for bringing external specialist capital managers into the Sky ecosystem. The three agents have a combined borrowing limit of $17.5 billion, roughly three times the current amount borrowed.
Kendrick outlined two stages for a rise in the SKY token price. First, once Sky builds a sufficient financial buffer, it can increase the share of existing revenue distributed to token holders. Sky’s reserve buffer currently stands at about $90 million and, at the current pace, could reach $150 million in about eight months, he estimated. After that, additional borrowing by agents could lift distributable revenue by another two to three times.
He estimated that the value accruing to SKY holders could increase fivefold from current levels by the end of 2028, leading to a fivefold rise in the token’s price. The forecast assumes SKY’s staking yield, now around 4.2%, remains unchanged. Kendrick classified SKY primarily as a staking-yield token and viewed buybacks as playing a relatively minor role.
The main risk, he added, is that demand for yield-bearing stablecoins may grow more slowly than expected. While maintaining his existing forecast for the overall stablecoin market to reach $2 trillion by the end of 2028, Kendrick said uncertainty remains over how much demand will flow into yield-bearing stablecoins such as Sky and Ethena.
