Wall Street Holds Its $100,000 Bitcoin Call. The Market Has Other Ideas.

Quick overview

Bitcoin briefly cracked below $60,000 last week for the first time since October 2024, got hit with $1.8 billion in liquidations in a single session, and watched spot ETFs bleed for 13 straight days. Standard Chartered looked at all of that and kept its $100,000 year-end target anyway.

Geoffrey Kendrick, who runs digital assets research at the bank, called the drop painful but argued the worst of the selling is probably done. He pointed to Strategy’s fresh Bitcoin purchase between June 1 and June 7 as early evidence that the aggressive buying pattern he had predicted was already underway. Thirty-two bitcoin moved the market in ways that had nothing to do with the actual size of the trade. Kendrick said as much, and the numbers back him up.

With bitcoin sitting around $63,400, getting to $100,000 before the year ends is a long road. That is nearly 58% from here, compressed into the back half of the calendar. It has happened before, but not under conditions that looked much like these.

Kendrick sees four things that need to happen: ETF outflows stop calling the shots, Strategy keeps accumulating, the CLARITY Act gets traction in Washington, and bitcoin pushes back above its key moving averages near $75,000 to $79,000. Early June brought a small positive turn in ETF flows, which gave bulls something to point at. Everything else is still open.

The broader Wall Street picture is more mixed than the headlines suggest. Bernstein put out a $150,000 target in March and has stayed quiet on it since the crash. Citi still has a base case above $100,000. JPMorgan’s model, built around a volatility-adjusted gold comparison, sits around $170,000, though that framing was set before things got ugly and it reads more as a structural long-term view than anything tied to this year’s price action. Standard Chartered itself has trimmed twice already, from $300,000 in December to $150,000 in January, then to $100,000 in February. Holding the line after a sub-$60,000 print on June 4 was the first time it did not cut.

Prediction markets are less charitable. Kalshi’s traders are putting just a 21% chance on bitcoin clearing $100,000 before the new year. On the downside, the same platform shows more than two-thirds of participants expecting a drop under $55,000 at some point this year, and a coin-flip chance of going below $50,000. That tells you where the real money is leaning.

Cycle analysts have their own read. Using the four-year halving clock, the historical low window opens around day 900, and the current cycle is near day 775. That points to something around October, with prior cycles suggesting prices in the $40,000s before a turn. From there, reaching $100,000 by December would require a pace of gains several times steeper than what Standard Chartered’s current target implies from today.

There is also a regulatory clock running in Europe. Starting July 1, platforms that do not hold MiCA licenses have to stop taking EU clients. It is not a headline-grabbing event, but it pulls away a quiet layer of flexibility that some institutional holders have been leaning on while navigating an already difficult stretch.

Standard Chartered’s Kendrick remains the only major institutional voice that has explicitly stood behind $100,000 after prices broke below $60,000. Until bitcoin clears $75,000 and holds it, the gap between where analysts say it should go and what the market is actually pricing is the most honest measure of where things stand right now.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR See More

Sophia Cruz

Financial Writer - Asian & European Desks

Sophia is an experienced writer, reporter and newsdesk member, mostly on the financial sectors. For the past 5 years Sophia has covered a wide variety of topics such as the financial markets, economics, technology, fin-tech and trading. Sophia has been a part of the FX Leaders team since 2017 and works on producing valuable content and information for traders of all levels of experience.

Ethereum Price Prediction after Bitmine Increases ETH Holdings to 5.4 Million Coins

19 h ago

Save

Bitcoin Price Forecast: $65K Macro Target Reopens as Saylor Triggers Secret Buying Signal

1 day ago

Save

Bitcoin Dips to $61.2K Then Recovers to $63K in Predictably Calm Move

1 day ago

Save