Bitcoin could be slowly picking up pace and might soon reach a record high of $120,000, says Geoffrey Kendrick, global head of Digital Assets Research at Standard Chartered.
He says key indicators are pointing to a good time to buy the asset.
According to Kendrick, detailed in a new report sent to The Block, the leg up is driven by three significant factors: the U.S. Treasury term premium hitting a 12-year-high, aggressive whale accumulation, and the definition of ‘safety-asset’ slowly turning away from gold to Bitcoin via ETFs.
He also remarked that American-based investors have been increasingly buying Bitcoin since President Donald Trump’s 90-day extension of the tariff for all nations except China. After the announcement, Bitcoin has outpaced tech stocks, decoupling from its previous correlation.
Whale investors have continued to buy through the tariff-driven downturn (and recovery), as they have during past rallies after the Silicon Valley Bank collapse, Bitcoin ETF approvals, and Trump’s election win. Interestingly, on Apr 28, Strategy reported that it bought about 15,355 Bitcoins at $1.42 billion.
Kendrick has a long-term price target of $200,000 for 2025 and anticipates the rallies to extend into summer, abetted by ETF 13F filings and possible U.S. legislation on stablecoins.
Kendrick claims that Bitcoin is now a better hedge against financial system risk than gold, noting that more money is transferred from gold ETFs to Bitcoin ETFs. While gold is the safer bet against geopolitical uncertainty, “we would argue that Bitcoin is more effective in this regard because of its decentralized nature,” he said.
At press time, Bitcoin is trading at $95,232.53, up by over 1% in the last 24 hours, as per Kraken’s price page.
