Standard Chartered's Head of Digital Assets Geoffrey Kendrick Rethinks His Bitcoin Forecast

Standard Chartered's Head of Digital Assets, Geoffrey Kendrick, is rethinking his bullish bitcoin forecast, and not because he was too optimistic.

Standard Chartered's Head of Digital Assets, Geoffrey Kendrick, is reconsidering his bullish bitcoin forecast, and it's not because he's turning bearish. Instead, the crypto strategist is preparing to revise his predictions upward, as the world's largest cryptocurrency continues its rapid ascent.

Kendrick is rolling back his earlier prediction that bitcoin would peak around $120,000 in Q2 2025.

"I apologise that my USD120k Q2 target may be too low," Kendrick said Thursday in an email to clients.

Just last month, Kendrick projected a new all-time high for bitcoin by mid-year, driven by "a strategic asset reallocation away from U.S. assets" and accumulation by "whales," referring to major holders with large positions.

But with bitcoin now hovering close to $100,000 and surging more than 3% on the day to $99,293.54, according to CoinDesk data, that rally has moved faster than anticipated.

"The dominant story for Bitcoin has changed again," Kendrick said. "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."

Among those flows: $5.3 billion in inflows over the last three weeks into U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs, as institutions are displaying a strong interest in the crypto space.

Highlighting several heavyweight examples, Kendrick noted that Strategy is ramping up bitcoin buys, the Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund is known to hold BlackRock’s spot Bitcoin IBIT, and the Swiss National Bank was recently reported to be holding shares of MicroStrategy (NASDAQ:MSTR), often seen as a leveraged proxy for bitcoin itself.

Previously, bitcoin was often lumped in with high-risk U.S. tech stocks, mirroring their volatility. But with the current wave of institutional adoption, Kendrick believes bitcoin has taken on a new narrative—one that might carry it well beyond the $120,000 mark this summer.

"We expect these supportive factors to push BTC to a fresh all-time high around USD 120,000 in Q2," Kendrick had said earlier. Now, with BTC nearing six figures, that milestone might just be a stepping stone.

As bitcoin continues its blistering rally, reaching a new all-time high in Q2 2025 at $120,000, it seems Standard Chartered's strategists may need to adjust their predictions once again.