- Standard Chartered has raised eyebrows by predicting that Bitcoin will reach $50,000 and $124,000 next year
- The bank has a history of predicting Bitcoin price rises and has yet to hit one
- The bank puts the price increase down to a reduction in miner selling
Standard Chartered has raised eyebrows by predicting that Bitcoin will reach $50,000 and $124,000 next year. The outlandish prediction is the latest in a line that the bank has made in recent years, and it’s fair to say that its record to date is far from accurate. Standard Chartered believes that “Increased miner profitability per BTC mined means they (miners) can sell less while maintaining cash inflows, reducing net BTC supply and pushing BTC prices higher,” arguing that miners around the world will soon need to sell fewer bitcoins to cover their costs given the reduced cost of running machines and an improvement in their efficiency.
Standard Chartered’s Bitcoin Price Prediction History
In September 2021 Standard Chartered forecast a valuation of $50,000 to $175,000 for Bitcoin over the long term while pegging Ethereum as somewhere between $26,000 to $35,000 in the long run.
It has since offered more short-term forecasts, suggesting in December that Bitcoin would crash to $5,000 in the bear market, which of course it didn’t, but by April it had changed its tune and offered a $100,000 Bitcoin in 2024, saying that its unique decentralized design made it a tempting asset at a time when the traditional banking sector is under huge pressure.
Halving Will Drive Price Increase
Standard Chartered has now upgraded this prediction to suggest that Bitcoin will pull a 4x within the next 18 months based on the impact of next year’s halving. The bank’s analyst Geoff Kendrick estimates that miners have recently been selling 100% of their new coins, but this will drop to 20-30% if the price hits $50,000, calling this “the equivalent of miners reducing the amount of bitcoins they sell per day to just 180-270 from 900 currently.”
Kendrick adds that “Over a year, that would reduce miner selling from 328,500 to a range of 65,700-98,550 – a reduction in net BTC supply of roughly 250,000 bitcoins a year.” Whether a reduction in selling pressure is enough to help get Bitcoin to such an astronomical price of course remains to be seen, but it would be a surprise just three years after the prior high.
