Bitcoin Price May Hit $100K by Year-End, Standard Chartered Bank Says

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The crypto winter is finally over and the world’s largest cryptocurrency, bitcoin (BTC), has potential to reach levels of $100,000 by the year-end, according to a research report by Standard Chartered Bank.

The climb to $100K could be driven by a number of factors, including the recent banking-sector crisis which helped to “re-establish bitcoin’s use as a decentralized scarce digital asset,” the bank said in the report on Monday.

“Against this backdrop, bitcoin has benefited from its status as a branded safe haven, a perceived relative store of value and a means of remittance,” analyst Geoff Kendrick said in the report. Bitcoin has gained 65% since the start of the year, rising above the $30,000 mark last week, for the first time in almost a year.

The report also noted one of the drivers for the price to reach the $100,000 mark is the broader macro backdrop for risky assets gradually improving as the Federal Open Market Committee nears the end of its tightening cycle. “While BTC can trade well when risky assets suffer, correlations to the Nasdaq suggest that it should trade better if risky assets improve broadly,” Kendrick said.

Standard Chartered expects to see bitcoin’s share of the entire crypto market capitalization to keep rising, back to the 50-60% range. The bitcoin dominance rate is currently around 47%, according to data from TradingView. It was around 40% during the fall out of Silicon Valley Bank in mid-March.

Bitcoin’s upcoming halving – the process whereby the rewards for mining a new block gets halved every four years – is also poised to be a positive driver for the price of bitcoin, wrote the report. “As we approach the next halving, we expect cyclical drivers to become more constructive, as they have in previous cycles,” according to the report.

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