One of bitcoin's biggest bulls just slashed their forecast in half

• Standard Chartered slashed its price target for bitcoin over the next five years.

• The bank, which once saw bitcoin hitting $200k this year, revised its targets amid the latest bear market.

• It now predicts that bitcoin will hit $150k by the end of 2026, half of what it previously predicted.

One of Wall Street’s biggest bitcoin cheerleaders has significantly dialed down his forecast for the crypto.

Geoff Kendrick of Standard Chartered, who previously said he saw bitcoin climbing as high as $200,000 by the end of 2025, told clients in a note that the bank has aggressively slashed its price forecasts for bitcoin through the end of the decade.

Kendrick said the bank’s view is now for bitcoin to end this year at around $100,000, implying 6% upside from the crypto’s current levels.

For next year, he see bitcoin hitting $150,000, about half of the prior target of $300,000.

Here’s the rundown of where Standard Chartered thinks the token is headed over the next five years:

The price target changes were largely spurred by bitcoin’s recent sell-off, Kendrick, the global head of digital assets research at Standard Chartered, wrote in a note on Tuesday. The crypto is down around 27% from its peak in early October.

He said that bitcoin treasuries — firms that buy and hold bitcoin on their balance sheets — likely won’t support the price of the cryptocurrency going forward. Instead, the token will have to rely primarily on ETF buying to move higher, he added.

“Price action has forced us to recalibrate our Bitcoin price forecasts,” Kendrick wrote, adding that the firm believed bitcoin treasury buying had “run its course,” though ETF inflows could pick up “periodically.”

It’s been a rough year for bitcoin, which was rocked earlier in the year as markets reacted to tariffs, and has been weighed down by worries about higher inflation and fewer Fed rate cuts in 2026.

Its latest decline has been brought on by a handful of bearish factors, like low liquidity in the market, a risk-off mood amid rate-cut uncertainty, and speculation that Strategy, the largest corporate buyer of bitcoin, could have to sell some of its token.

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