Despite the correction currently happening in the crypto markets, a forecast has been published that sees the price of Bitcoin reaching 150,000 USD by the end of 2024.
Summary
Standard Chartered Bank’s forecast on the price of Bitcoin: $150,000 by the end of 2024
Standard Chartered Bank publishes on its official website several analysis reports regarding many different markets.
Yesterday their analyst Geoffrey Kendrick drafted a report in which he updates the bank’s forecasts regarding the price of Bitcoin.
Indeed, they had previously predicted reaching $100,000 by the end of the year, but due to what has happened in the last two months, they had to update this forecast to $150,000.
Furthermore, the same forecast also states that there is a possibility that next year could even reach $250,000 at some point, if strong inflows of new capital into ETFs were to continue, or if forex reserve managers were to start buying BTC.
Therefore, the capital inflows into the Bitcoin ETFs higher than expected forced Kendrick’s analyst team to raise the forecast for 2024 to $150,000, while any new purchases of BTC, or BTC ETFs, by traditional fund managers could even bring it up to $250,000 in 2025.
If new capital does not arrive, for example from forex reserve managers, they still predict a BTC price of $200,000 in 2025.
According to analysts at Standard Chartered Bank, most of the new inflows will likely come from pension funds or similar sources.
Another large potential liquidity pool is the foreign exchange reserves.
The analogy with gold
According to analysts at Standard Chartered Bank, these forecasts would be in line with the analogy with gold.
That is, their deductions are based on the comparison with the introduction of gold ETFs in the USA in the early 2000s, and on portfolio optimization by shifting 20% of the gold investment quota to Bitcoin.
They claim that if the price of gold remains substantially unchanged, the price of BTC should increase up to 190,000 USD so that its share reaches the 20% mentioned above.
After all, when gold ETFs were first introduced on US exchanges, they attracted new capital for several years.
It must be said, however, that before those ETFs, purchases of gold on financial markets were rather difficult, and therefore rare, while Bitcoin has always been readily available for purchase on financial markets.
However, many speculate that the positive effect of the new ETFs on the price of BTC could last at least two, if not even three years.
The ongoing correction confirms the prediction of Bitcoin price at 150,000 USD
Obviously, as always, it will not be a continuous growth.
For example, in mid-October 2023, the price of Bitcoin was still around $27,000, but after rising to $45,000 at the beginning of December, it had dropped to around $40,000 by mid-month.
There was a second run at the beginning of January, reaching $49,000, but then dropping shortly after to $38,500.
The peak of the current bull run was reached on Thursday, March 14, five days ago, at over $73,800, and at this point it is more than normal that a new correction has been triggered.
Currently the price of BTC has dropped by 13% compared to Thursday’s highs, but it is still above the levels at the beginning of the month.
Probably the key level is $62,000 around which the price oscillated for five consecutive days from the end of February to March 4th.
It is worth noting that the current correction seems to be just a return to normalcy after a few weeks of excessive euphoria, so much so that the Fear & Greed Index is still high, despite the price drop.
This correction is probably destined to end soon, also because then enthusiasm for the halving could return.
April halving
The Bitcoin halving will occur exactly at block number 840,000.
Currently there are still just under 4,700 blocks missing to reach number 840,000, and on average about 146 are mined per day.
So it is expected that the halving should occur around April 20th.
The anticipation is high, although it must be said that the halving of the miners’ reward in the past has led to a significant reduction in the supply of BTC on the market only months after the halving itself.
It is therefore possible that just after the halving, and in the following weeks, there may be another retracement, especially if before April 20th the price of BTC were to rise again, perhaps even above $74,000.
Moreover, historically May has never been a particularly good month for crypto markets, as it was also in the year of the last major bull run, 2021.
Furthermore, usually the price of Bitcoin reaches its annual highs at the end of the year, between November and December, so it is possible to imagine that after the current correction, and maybe a new rise before the halving, there could be a real retracement between late April and early May, and then maybe conclude the bull run at the end of the year with a new rally from July to November.
