Standard Chartered: Bitcoin could reach $50,000 this year

Standard Chartered, a global financial giant, says Bitcoin (BTC) price could rise to $50,000 this year. More than that, analysts at the bank suggest the benchmark cryptocurrency’s value could soar to $120,000 in 2024.

A note the bank published on Monday, as reported by Reuters, also notes that the potential blockbuster gains could see miners hoard huge amounts of the coin.

Standard Chartered released a BTC price prediction note in April in which its analysts charted a possible upside to $100,000 by the end of 2024. Among the key bases for that forecast was that the market was seeing an end to the crypto winter.

Geoff Kendrick, a top FX analyst at the bank, says that prediction now has a potential 20% upside to it. The analyst notes that increasing profitability means reduced selling as miners maintain cash inflows. Reduced net supply could catalyse further breakout action as more people buy Bitcoin.

Bitcoin price amid global adoption

The bank’s bitcoin price prediction comes as the leading cryptocurrency continued to hover around $30k. The outlook over the past few weeks has been positive for BTC, particularly with the bullish flip in market sentiment following asset management titan BlackRock’s filing for a spot Bitcoin ETF.

The firm’s CEO Larry Fink’s comments that the cryptocurrency was now an international asset and digital gold also helped fire bulls. Amid this is the growing adoption of BTC among institutional investors. While MicroStrategy’s holdings are the largest by a publicly-traded company at 150,000 BTC, data shows more and more institutions are buying the cryptocurrency.

Indeed, Invezz recently highlighted the fact that as institutional investors buy, the supply on exchanges has been falling.