Standard Chartered, the multinational banking giant, is in the news today after it significantly revised its price forecast for Bitcoin. In fact, it dramatically cut its 2025 projection in half.
This revision comes on the back of BTC’s recent struggles on the price charts, following an eye-opening performance in the final quarter of 2024.
Standard Chartered’s Bitcoin prediction
The bank now believes that Bitcoin will reach $100,000 by the close of 2025- A steep reduction from its previous target of $200,000. Additionally, the long-term forecast of $500,000 has been delayed, with the bank moving the timeline from 2028 to 2030.
This may be a sign of analysts now looking at BTC’s short and long-term targets through the prism of caution.
With Bitcoin [BTC] trading near $90,000 at press time, the crypto is now stuck in a tight trading band. In fact, some analysts are also noting a scarcity of immediate catalysts powerful enough to push the price significantly higher.
Institutional buying fails to meet high expectations
The primary driver behind this downward adjustment, according to Standard Chartered analyst Geoffrey Kendrick, is a fundamental reassessment of the expected demand sources that were projected to propel Bitcoin to record highs.
Kendrick highlighted two major forces driving the recalibration.
First is corporate treasury exhaustion – The intense wave of corporate Bitcoin accumulation that defined 2024, led most prominently by Strategy, has largely run its course. This buying frenzy once acted as a powerful price floor for Bitcoin. However, with these treasuries now pausing or slowing their purchases, a critical source of market support has faded.
Second is the sharp deceleration in ETF inflows. While Spot Bitcoin ETFs were expected to fuel sustained institutional demand, their adoption has been meaningfully slower than early analyst projections.
The capital streaming into these vehicles has cooled down, falling well below the aggressive inflow models forecast at launch.
Together, these factors imply that two of the strongest structural demand engines for Bitcoin are no longer firing at full strength. This has forced analysts to reassess expectations for near-term price momentum.
What are datasets telling us?
The aforementioned slowdown is evident when the datasets are looked at too. For instance – Quarterly inflows into Bitcoin ETFs stand at only around 50,000 coins right now.
This figure represents the weakest performance since these products were launched in the U.S. It is a steep drop from the nearly 450,000 BTC per quarter that was being purchased by combined corporate treasuries and ETFs in late 2024.
Kendrick’s analysis now suggests that future price appreciation will rely almost entirely on ETF-related buying.
Adding another layer of complexity is the potential impact of Federal Reserve policy.
While investors anticipate a near-term interest rate reduction, the forward guidance on monetary policy for the coming year is the more critical element.
Rejecting the traditional halving cycle
Finally, Standard Chartered’s new forecast explicitly moves away from the historic “halving cycle” models that have long been the standard for Bitcoin price analysis.
According to Matthew Sigel,
“With the advent of ETF buying, we think the BTC halving cycle is no longer a relevant price driver. The logic in previous cycles (when US ETFs did not exist) – i.e., prices would peak about 18 months after each halving and decline thereafter – is no longer valid, in our view.”
Sigel added,
“However, it will take a break of the current all-time high (USD 126,000 on 6 October 2025) to prove that; we expect this to happen in H1-2026.”
According to Kendrick, the historical boom-and-bust patterns are no longer applicable to the current, maturing market. Severe downturns, the so-called “crypto winters,” may be obsolete, he added.
Final thoughts
- The bank now sees ETF inflows, not corporate treasuries, as the only meaningful driver of BTC’s next leg up.
- Despite the revised forecast, Standard Chartered still rejects the classic halving-cycle boom-and-bust model.
