Standard Chartered Says Crypto Winter Is Over, Keeps $100K Target

Standard Chartered’s Geoffrey Kendrick has declared the crypto winter over and is keeping his $100,000 year-end Bitcoin target intact, even after a 53 percent drawdown from the asset’s October 2025 all-time high. In a Friday note, the bank’s global head of digital asset research pointed to a $59,000 Bitcoin low as the cycle bottom and welcomed a return to what he called crypto Spring.

Bitcoin traded near $64,000 at the time of writing, having touched as low as $59,375 on June 5 before bouncing alongside the SpaceX listing. Ether held near $1,670, still about 57 percent below its August 2025 high, with Standard Chartered’s separate $4,000 year-end target for the token also still on the books. The bank is not, however, claiming victory. Bitcoin is still trading roughly 49 percent below the $100,000 target, and Ether is even further away from its $4,000 year-end mark.

Kendrick Calls the Bottom at $59,000

Standard Chartered’s stance rests on a single figure: the $59,000 print Bitcoin made on the evening of June 5, around 18:00 UTC. In a note circulated Friday, Kendrick argued that the low locked in the cycle’s worst selling, with Bitcoin closing the loop on a 53 percent drawdown from its October 6, 2025 all-time high of $59,375. The all-time high itself sat at $126,000.

The bank first published its $100,000 year-end call in February, then sat on it through months of weakening prices. Ether’s call carries the same year-end timeframe, with a target of $4,000 and a longer-horizon 2030 target of $40,000.

Total crypto market capitalization stood at about $2.277 trillion on Friday, down from $2.29 trillion a week earlier, a modest move that masks how violent the path down has been. Standard Chartered’s broader crypto posture now includes running Hong Kong’s first institutional crypto custody service offered by a Global Systemically Important Bank, a service it launched in late May through a partnership with SOLOWIN Holdings.

Winter is over. Welcome back to crypto Spring.

That line came from Kendrick’s note declaring the crypto winter over. The bank is not pretending the call is a victory lap. Bitcoin is still trading roughly 49 percent below the $100,000 target, and Ether is even further away from its $4,000 year-end mark.

The Two Pressures He Says Are Easing

Kendrick’s case rests on two pressures he now believes are subsiding: the cash drag from SpaceX’s record public debut, and the macro lift from a possible US-Iran peace deal.

Elon Musk’s company priced 555.6 million shares at $135 each on Thursday, raising $75 billion in the largest IPO ever and easily topping Saudi Aramco’s $30 billion listing in 2019. Kendrick wrote that ETF holders had been liquidating positions to free up cash for the offering, and noted that the debut’s intense market demand was already showing up on Hyperliquid, where SpaceX crypto perps traded at a valuation of up to $2.4 trillion. Crypto perp traders had been active across the pre-IPO SpaceX crypto futures market for weeks, with the same trading tape captured in Bitcoin and SpaceX market action on the day of the listing.

The macro pressure ran through the bond market. The war in the Middle East has lifted energy costs, which pulled U.S. Treasury yields higher and made risk assets including crypto less attractive.

Kendrick pointed to a possible G7-brokered U.S.-Iran peace deal as a way to cap oil prices and cool the bond market. West Texas Intermediate crude fell 1.5 percent on Friday to $86 a barrel, and Brent slipped to about $87 a barrel. Trump later reversed course on Truth Social and warned Tehran’s officials to “get their act together.” The framing in Kendrick’s call that the cycle low is now in is the most direct institutional sign-off the cycle has produced, while Reuters coverage of Standard Chartered’s sticking by the $100,000 Bitcoin call underscores the bank’s public commitment to the target.

Three Tests Before the Call Holds

Kendrick does not pretend the call is a done deal. He flagged three specific confirmation signals he is watching this week.

He flagged three signals: a Monday announcement from Strategy, the Michael Saylor-led corporate treasury firm, that it added more Bitcoin to its balance sheet; a return to net-positive daily inflows for U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs on Friday, after more than $5.72 billion in redemptions since the second week of May; and continued declines in international oil prices and U.S. Treasury yields.

Strategy, whose STRC preferred trades below par at $96.20, has not yet reported this week’s purchase, and Saylor’s own X post this week only said “volatility creates opportunity.” The setup is binary: the bank’s $100,000 call is back at the center of the year-end market debate only if those three fire, and without them the call stays a bullish institutional view held against a tape still well below the target. The bank is not, in other words, declaring victory. Bitcoin is still trading roughly 49 percent below the $100,000 target, and Ether is roughly 58 percent below its $4,000 year-end mark. Earlier skepticism was captured when Standard Chartered’s analyst publicly apologized for an earlier $120,000 Bitcoin call coming in too low, and a more recent cut in expectations appears in The Street’s report on a 170-year-old bank halving its Bitcoin price prediction.

Other Strategists Are Not Buying It

Not every strategist is convinced. Paul Howard, senior director at trading firm Wincent, said in the same live coverage that Bitcoin’s recent bounce does not look like a durable bottom yet, pointing to the same crowded liquidity moment Kendrick is calling a wash. He expects Bitcoin to consolidate through the summer.

Howard is watching for a possible test of the $50,000 level, which he said many traders he tracks are eyeing as a potential entry point. A move there would mark a roughly 60 percent drawdown from the October high, in his framing closer to the bottoms seen in prior Bitcoin cycles.

There is still room for bitcoin to sell off. Many traders are eyeing the $50,000 level as a potential entry point.

Other market signals are mixed. Bitfinex margin longs, a closely watched measure of leveraged bullishness, crossed 90,000 BTC for the first time since November 2023, rising 23 percent year-to-date even as the spot price is down 29 percent over the same period. On the other side, Strategy’s STRC preferred is still well below par at $96.20, suggesting investors are demanding a yield above the current 11.5 percent to back the firm’s Bitcoin treasury strategy, and Coinbase (COIN) shares have lost about a third of their value in 2026. The derivatives market has also tilted defensive: Ether futures open interest hit a record 16.39 million ETH, around $32.61 billion, even as the spot price sank, a pattern that typically signals fresh short positions rather than accumulation. Broader context for the recent drawdown appears in Investopedia’s coverage of Bitcoin falling below $60,000, while Finance Magnates’ BTC price prediction targeting September 2024 lows maps the downside scenarios strategists like Howard have on their screens.

Why Standard Chartered Sees Ethereum Catching Up

Kendrick expects Ether to outperform Bitcoin in the near term, a view that fits Standard Chartered’s broader thesis that onchain activity is running well ahead of token prices. The bank kept its $4,000 year-end target for ETH and a $40,000 2030 target in place. The token has tumbled about 57 percent from its August 2025 high to near $1,900 and now trades near $1,670.

The bull case rests on three forces that Standard Chartered says Ethereum dominates. The bank laid them out in a Thursday note that drew a direct comparison between Ether’s current setup and the trajectory of Amazon’s stock after the dot-com crash, in Kendrick’s Ethereum note drawing the Amazon dot-com comparison. The longer-horizon framing is laid out in CoinDesk’s report on Standard Chartered lifting its Ether price target to $7,500 year-end and $25,000 in 2028, while Yahoo Finance’s piece on Standard Chartered’s Ethereum upside case tracks the same trajectory.

The three forces line up as follows:

• Stablecoins: The market stands at about $321 billion today, with a forecast $2 trillion by late 2028. Ethereum hosts roughly 54 percent of all stablecoins, and those tokens account for about a third of network transactions this year.
• Tokenized real-world assets: Non-stablecoin RWAs are forecast to multiply fiftyfold to $2 trillion by 2028, and Ethereum currently carries about 62 percent of the market.
• ETH/BTC ratio: The ratio has dropped 37 percent since August and now sits near 0.03, while Standard Chartered expects a recovery to 0.04 by the end of 2026, a level consistent with $4,000 Ether at $100,000 Bitcoin.

What Comes Next for the Call

The next two trading sessions will do most of the work. A Monday Strategy buy announcement, Friday ETF flow data, and any fresh signal on the U.S.-Iran track will tell the market whether Kendrick’s three confirmations are lining up or whether the cycle has more damage to do.

For now, the bank’s call is a wager, not a verdict. Winter’s over, in Standard Chartered’s view, but the market is still trading closer to the bottom than to the target.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Standard Chartered’s Bitcoin price target?

Geoffrey Kendrick is keeping the $100,000 year-end Bitcoin target he first set in February, a call that has now held through a 53 percent drawdown from the October 2025 high of $126,000. The $59,000 print on June 5, he argues, marked the cycle bottom.

What is Standard Chartered’s Ethereum price target?

The bank has a $4,000 year-end 2026 target for Ether and a $40,000 2030 target, both kept in place in a Thursday research note. ETH traded near $1,670 on June 12, with the bull case built on stablecoin settlement, tokenized real-world assets, and an ETH/BTC ratio recovery toward 0.04.

Why does Geoffrey Kendrick think the crypto winter is over?

Kendrick points to two pressures that he says are now easing: spot Bitcoin ETF selling that has pulled $5.72 billion from the funds since the second week of May, partly to free cash for the SpaceX IPO, and a possible US-Iran peace deal that could keep oil prices and U.S. Treasury yields from climbing further.

When did Bitcoin hit its recent low?

Bitcoin touched $59,375 on June 5, 2026, the lowest print since before the November 2024 U.S. election. By June 12 the price had bounced above $63,500 and at one point traded just shy of $64,000.

What would break Standard Chartered’s bottom call?

The call breaks if Bitcoin loses the $59,000 low, if Monday’s Strategy update shows no fresh buying, or if U.S. spot Bitcoin ETF flows stay negative into the end of the week. Paul Howard at Wincent told CoinDesk that many traders are still eyeing $50,000 as a possible next entry, a level that would represent a roughly 60 percent drawdown from the October high.