Continued success of the new Bitcoin exchange-traded funds will push the price of the cryptocurrency higher, the bank said.
British multinational bank Standard Chartered is even more bullish on Bitcoin and now predicts that the biggest cryptocurrency will hit a price of $150,000 this year.
In a research note Monday, analysts from the bank added that if exchange-traded fund (ETF) flows continue growing, then the digital coin could hit $250,000 in 2025.
Standard Chartered analysts said this time last year that Bitcoin could hit $100,000 in 2024. By summer, they had revised their forecast to predict a $120,000 price for the same timeframe.
“For 2024, the $150,000 level now looks likely,” the note by Geoff Kendrick and Suki Cooper read. “For end-2024, we raise our long-held price estimate to the $150,000 level from $100,000 given the more rapid pass-through from ETF inflows to the BTC price to date.”
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in January approved 11 spot Bitcoin ETFs. The investment vehicles which trade on stock exchanges and allow people to buy shares which track the underlying price of the asset have received record inflows due to rising demand from traditional investors.
Standard Chartered argued that if the success of the new ETFs continues, then Bitcoin’s price will continue to rise.
The bank’s analysts used a gold ETF analogy to get to the $250,000 level for 2025. When gold ETFs hit the market, they wrote, the price of the commodity rose as new investors gained access to the market.
Though the price of gold rose slowly as investors put cash into the ETFs, Standard Chartered argued that the Bitcoin market “will mature much faster.”
Source: decrypt