Standard Chartered’s Kendrick warns Bitcoin may drop to $50,000 before year-end rebound
Standard Chartered’s Geoffrey Kendrick warns of a final washout in Bitcoin to $50,000 before a sharp rebound. He still sees $100,000 by year-end and $500,000 by 2030.
He framed the slide as macro-driven, not crypto-specific. “Picking the bottom is always extremely difficult,” Kendrick said on Deribit’s podcast, calling the selloff “mostly orderly.” He flagged sticky ETF positioning and continued MicroStrategy buying as supports, citing his interview on Deribit’s Crypto Options Unplugged.
Near term stays fragile. He sees more deleveraging ahead. “Bitcoin… is still very highly correlated with the Nasdaq,” he said, noting weak Big Tech earnings and limited Fed support could pull crypto lower, per the interview.
$50,000 looks plausible to him. He compared it with prior cycle drawdowns and noted the absence of an internal blow-up like FTX this time, referencing the podcast and the past collapses summarized by Glassnode’s FTX/Luna recap.
Why he’s long-term bullish:
- Targets: BTC $100k in 2026 and $500k by 2030, reiterated on Deribit and in Standard Chartered’s forecast update.
- Stablecoins: supply near $300B today, with about $200B used as EM savings, up from ~$200B last year. He projects up to $2T by end-2028, per his remarks.
- Tokenized RWAs: from roughly $40B now to $2T by end-2028, according to Kendrick.
- Macro flow-through: if stablecoin issuers absorb ~$1T in T-bill demand over three years, Treasury could tilt issuance to the front end, flatten the curve, and bolster dollar liquidity, which he says later supports risk assets and BTC, as discussed on Deribit.
He extends the view to other large caps. He sees Ethereum at $40,000 by 2030, helped by stablecoins and tokenization, per Standard Chartered’s ETH note. He puts Solana at $2,000 by 2030, driven by ultra-cheap flows and micropayments, citing the bank’s Solana outlook.
“Pretty much all the underlying metrics… have been improving,” he said. “Except for the price,” on Deribit.
At press time, Bitcoin traded at $70,260.
