$120K Was Too Low—Standard Chartered Apologizes for Undervaluing Bitcoin

Bitcoin’s parabolic rise past $100K has Standard Chartered backpedaling fast, admitting its $120K forecast underestimated the explosive power of institutional momentum.

Standard Chartered Apologizes for $120K Bitcoin Target Being Too Low

Standard Chartered’s head of digital assets, Geoffrey Kendrick, issued a notable revision to his bitcoin outlook on Thursday, acknowledging that the cryptocurrency’s recent surge had surpassed his expectations. With bitcoin trading above $100,000 and continuing to attract large-scale institutional investment, Kendrick suggested that his previous forecast may no longer reflect the market’s strength. He wrote in an email to clients:

I apologise that my USD120K Q2 target may be too low.

Kendrick’s updated outlook reflects a sharp reassessment of market conditions as BTC continues its aggressive rally, recently surpassing $100K. His prior projection, issued last month, anticipated that supportive macroeconomic shifts and large-scale investor buying would lift bitcoin to record highs by mid-year. The analyst said at the time: “We expect these supportive factors to push BTC to a fresh all-time high around USD 120,000 in Q2. We see gains continuing through the summer, taking BTC-USD towards our year-end forecast of 200,000.”

The price level that once appeared ambitious now “looks very achievable,” he said on Thursday, pointing to shifting market dynamics and rising institutional interest as primary drivers. Kendrick opined:

The dominant story for bitcoin has changed again. It was correlation to risk assets … It then became a way to position for strategic asset reallocation out of US assets. It is now all about flows. And flows are coming in many forms.

The Standard Chartered head of digital assets attributed the upward momentum to $5.3 billion of net inflows into U.S. spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) over the past three weeks. He pointed to notable institutional activity as further confirmation of this trend, referencing software intelligence firm Microstrategy (Nasdaq: MSTR) increasing its bitcoin holdings, Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund taking a position in Blackrock’s IBIT bitcoin ETF, and the Swiss National Bank buying shares in Microstrategy.