‘Winter Is Over’: Standard Chartered Calls Crypto Bottom as Bitcoin Recovers From $60K Fall

The crypto market has taken a heavy beating since Bitcoin notched all-time highs eight months ago, though it’s likely past its nadir, according to Standard Chartered’s Geoff Kendrick.

The investment bank’s global head of digital asset research posited in a Friday note that Bitcoin’s recent fall to nearly $59,000 marked crypto winter’s most frigid conditions—representing a 53% drawdown from its peak price of $126,000 in October.

“I think we have now seen the low in crypto asset prices,” he wrote. “Winter is over.”

Developments on Friday are shaping up as catalysts for a crypto market that has proved tepid in recent months, Kendrick added, pointing to signs of a potential peace deal between the U.S. and Iran ahead of next week’s G7 summit, as well as SpaceX’s historic $1.75 trillion IPO.

Since war in the Middle East began choking global oil supplies, surging energy costs have coaxed U.S. Treasury yields higher, punishing risk assets like crypto as guaranteed, risk-free government debt has become relatively attractive, Kendrick noted. 

The investment bank issued a $100,000 price target for Bitcoin in February.

Bitcoin recently changed hands above $64,000, a 5% increase over the past week, according to CoinGecko. Over the same period, the total value of all cryptocurrencies tracked by the crypto data aggregator had edged down to $2.277 trillion from $2.29 trillion.

Although President Trump has claimed numerous times that the U.S. and Iran are close to establishing an arrangement that would signal an end to the three-month conflict, he announced on Thursday that a breakthrough could come this weekend, per AP News.

“If true, [it] may sound the end to higher oil prices,” Kendrick wrote.

West Texas Intermediate crude fell 1.5% on Friday to $86 per barrel, according to Trading Economics. On Myriad, a prediction market owned by Decrypt’s parent company Dastan, traders grew confident that the U.S. oil benchmark will fall to $55 before $120.

In recent weeks, exchange-traded funds that track Bitcoin have seen some of the sharpest selling “since inception,” Kendrick wrote. Indeed, the Wall Street vehicles have posted roughly $5 billion in net outflows since mid-May, according to CoinGlass.

Kendrick argued that some of the selling likely stems from investors looking to hitch a ride on Elon Musk’s rocket company, “selling to free up cash to enter the IPO.”

Still, Kendrick wrote that his call requires some signs of confirmation. That includes net inflows for Bitcoin ETFs on Friday, a continued decline in oil prices, and an announcement from Strategy on Monday that the Bitcoin-buying firm expanded its holdings.