Standard Chartered Analyst: Crypto Market May Have Hit Its Lowest Point

In brief

Standard Chartered analyst Geoff Kendrick suggests the crypto market has hit its lowest point following Bitcoin's recent drop to nearly $59,000.

Potential geopolitical relief via a U.S.-Iran peace deal, as well as SpaceX’s IPO, are acting as market catalysts to reverse recent stagnation.

Kendrick said confirming a market turnaround will rely on a continued drop in oil prices, renewed Bitcoin ETF inflows, and Strategy’s appetite for buying BTC.

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.”