Bitcoin May Sink To $50K Before Rallying, Standard | Crypto News
Standard Chartered’s Geoffrey Kendrick says Bitcoin may still face a closing washout to $50,000 before recovering sharply, arguing that the current drawdown appears more like a macro-led tech capitulation than a crypto-specific breakdown.
Speaking on Deribit’s Crypto Options Unplugged, Kendrick, the bank’s global head of digital property research, said he still expects Bitcoin to end the yr at $100,000 and attain $500,000 by 2030, even as he warned that the near-term setup stays fragile.
“Picking the bottom is always extremely difficult,” Kendrick said, framing the current selloff as largely orderly exterior a few unstable weeks. He argued that institutional positioning has held up better than many anticipated, pointing to comparatively sticky ETF publicity and continued shopping for from MicroStrategy even after the stock’s premium to internet asset worth fell below one.
Still, Kendrick said the market is probably not carried out deleveraging. “I suspect we could still see that final capitulation. Now, it could be macro driven,” he said. “Bitcoin and crypto assets more broadly is still very highly correlated with the Nasdaq.” In his view, weaker earnings from large US tech names over the next few months, mixed with a lack of instant Federal Reserve help, may drag crypto decrease alongside equities.
That, he said, is what makes the $50,000 stage believable. Kendrick in contrast the potential transfer with prior cycle drawdowns, noting that a decline to that zone would still be shallower than the roughly 75% peak-to-trough drop seen in the earlier cycle. The key distinction this time, he argued, is the absence so far of a major inside crypto failure on the size of FTX.
Why Kendrick Is Long-Term Bullish On Bitcoin
Even so, Kendrick’s medium- and long-term thesis stays emphatically bullish. He tied that outlook less to short-term trading flows than to what he sees as a structural shift pushed by stablecoins and tokenized real-world property. Last yr, when stablecoins stood around $200 billion, Kendrick projected they may grow to $2 trillion by the end of 2028. He said the market is now nearer to $300 billion, with a lot of that demand coming not from crypto trading but from financial savings use instances in rising markets.
“What’s replaced it has primarily been savings in emerging markets,” Kendrick said, referring to stablecoins’ unique function as on-off ramps for crypto trading. “On my estimate of the $300 billion, about $200 [billion] is for EM savings use case.” He added that a lot of that capital seems to sit in large wallets and turns over occasionally, suggesting it’s getting used more as saved worth than transactional float.
Kendrick’s broader argument is that this development may have macro penalties nicely past crypto. If stablecoin issuers take in close to $1 trillion in further T-bill demand over the next three years, he said, the US Treasury might reply by shifting issuance toward the entrance end, flattening the yield curve and reinforcing greenback demand. In his telling, that liquidity impact may ultimately turn out to be a tailwind for risk property, including Bitcoin.
“I think we go down to, let’s say, $50,000 and back to $100,000 by the end of this year and $500,000 by 2030,” Kendrick said. “Ironically, if stablecoins are massive and Genius Act is as it is, the inflow of cash on liquidity and flattening yield curve and all that sort of stuff becomes massively supportive of Bitcoin medium term.”
He prolonged that optimism across other large-cap crypto property. Kendrick said he sees Ethereum reaching $40,000 and Solana hitting $2,000 by 2030, with Ethereum benefiting from stablecoin and tokenization exercise and Solana from ultra-low-cost transaction flows and micropayments. He also projected tokenized real-world property may grow from roughly $40 billion today to $2 trillion by the end of 2028.
For now, though, Kendrick’s message was less about chasing momentum than about separating market price from underlying adoption. “Pretty much all the underlying metrics, if you like, have been improving,” he said. “Except for the price.”
At press time, Bitcoin traded at $70,260.
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