Standard Chartered is finally slashing its bitcoin target by half. Here's why.

Standard Chartered has halved its bitcoin year-end target to $100,000, down from $200,000, citing recent price action. The bank also revised its 2026 forecast to $150,000 and expects bitcoin to reach $500,000 by 2030. The revisions come amid weakening demand from digital-asset-treasury companies and mixed ETF flows. Despite challenges, institutional adoption is expected to drive future price action.

By Frances Yue Bitcoin on Tuesday was trading 26% below its October record high. As bitcoin edged higher Tuesday, Standard Chartered said it now expects the cryptocurrency to end the year higher at $100,000. That's still a halving of its previous year-end target of $200,000, which was issued in June 2024. The bank also halved its bitcoin forecast for year-end 2026 to $150,000, from $300,000, and lowered its year-end projections through 2029. But it still expects bitcoin (BTCUSD) can reach $500,000 in 2030, according to a Tuesday note by Geoff Kendrick, global head of digital-assets research at Standard Chartered. Until recently, Standard Chartered was one of the only major banks acting as a custodian of cryptocurrencies for its institutional clients. Unlike stocks, price targets for bitcoin can be few and far between on the Wall Street. The downward revisions also come as bitcoin has been treading water for the past few days and was trading slightly above $93,000 on Tuesday, almost 26% off its record high of $126,273 reached on Oct. 6. "Price action has forced us to recalibrate our bitcoin price forecasts," Kendrick wrote. Of note, Kendrick also said: "We think buying by bitcoin digital-asset-treasury companies (DATs) is likely over." Digital-asset-treasury companies are businesses that have adopted a strategy of piling up their balance sheets with crypto - even if historically many of these companies had little or nothing to do with crypto. A fear in markets has been that if these companies start selling crypto, one of the year's most popular trades could implode. Earlier this week, Michael Saylor's Strategy (MST), the largest and highest-profile bitcoin-treasury company, defied expectations that it may face difficulties in fundraising by disclosing it had purchased roughly another $1 billion worth of bitcoin last week, its biggest single acquisition since July. Strategy has been trading below the value of its bitcoin holdings since November, reversing the steep premium it once enjoyed, according to data provider BitcoinTreasuries.net. As of Tuesday, its shares traded at an 11% discount compared with a premium that reached as high as 700% in 2020. Read: GameStop's bitcoin holdings - and sales - slide Buying from both digital-asset-treasury companies and bitcoin exchange-traded funds has been one of the main forces driving bitcoin's price since 2024, according to Kendrick. But one leg of that demand appears to be weakening. Like Strategy, many other crypto-treasury companies have seen their share prices fall below the value of the crypto assets they hold. That makes additional buying harder to justify and less financially supported as they struggle to raise new financing, according to Kendrick. As a result, he expects buying from this group to stall. Read: Many crypto-treasury companies are trading for less than what their digital assets are worth. Is this a bargain or a big red flag? The chart below shows that the aggregate market net asset value of bitcoin-treasury companies - or the aggregate market capitalization of such companies divided by the value of bitcoin they held - has fallen sharply from earlier this year. Still, Kendrick noted that it remains unlikely Strategy will sell any of its bitcoin. For smaller digital-asset-treasury companies, Kendrick said the most probable outcome is stabilization rather than selling. These firms are more likely to pause or maintain their current holdings rather than unwind them, he added. Looking ahead, Kendrick expects bitcoin's price action to be driven mostly by ETF flows. He expected to see continued ETF inflows over the next several years, supported by broader institutional adoption of bitcoin. However, near-term flows have been mixed. BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin Trust IBIT, the largest bitcoin ETF, has logged six consecutive weeks of outflows as of last week - its longest streak of weekly outflows since its debut in January 2024, according to data from CFRA Research. It has still accumulated $25.4 billion in net inflows year to date. -Frances Yue This content was created by MarketWatch, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. MarketWatch is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal. (END) Dow Jones Newswires 12-09-25 1814ET