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Investing.com -- Standard Chartered’s top crypto analyst, Geoffrey Kendrick, remains bullish on Bitcoin, maintaining his forecast that the cryptocurrency could reach $500,000 before the end of Donald Trump’s presidency—even after a market downturn pushed Bitcoin to a three-month low.
Speaking to CNBC, Kendrick said he expects Bitcoin to hit $200,000 this year before continuing its upward trajectory in the coming years. He believes increasing institutional adoption and regulatory clarity in the US will help stabilize the market and reduce volatility over time.
"Within the crypto ecosystem, what we need are traditional financial players, like Standard Chartered (OTC:SCBFF), like BlackRock (NYSE:BLK) and others that have the ETFs now to really step in," Kendrick said on CNBC’s Squawk Box Europe on Thursday.
He added that as the industry becomes more institutionalized, it should become safer, with fewer negative headlines, referencing last week’s $1.5 billion hack of crypto exchange Bybit.
Despite the recent dip, Kendrick sees a more optimistic outlook for crypto later in the year, particularly as regulatory frameworks around stablecoins and anti-money laundering take shape.
"That should further legitimize, so you’ll see more US banks involved. You’ll see larger institutions in the US continue to push through," he said.
Bitcoin tumbled to a three-month low below $90,000 earlier this week, trading around the $86,000 mark as of Thursday, down roughly 20% from its record high of $108,786 in January.
Kendrick attributed the broader downturn in digital assets to uncertainty surrounding geopolitical conflicts, tariffs, and weakening risk appetite in equity markets.
"Risk assets don’t like uncertainty, and so that’s what we’ve seen. We’ve seen tech stocks in the US coming lower," Kendrick noted, emphasizing that the Bybit breach further contributed to the negative sentiment.
Still, he expects market conditions to improve as investors gain more confidence in regulatory progress and institutional participation.