Target $113,000. Three months after cutting its twelve-month target from $112,000 to $82,000, Citigroup is raising it again. The note, dated September 30 and relayed by Reuters on October 1, now sets Bitcoin at $113,000 and ether at $3,028, compared to $2,240. With nearly $2,900 billion in assets on the balance sheet as of June 30, the bank treats BTC in its notes as it treats the barrel of Brent or the ounce of gold: one more asset in the macro grid.
By July, the team no longer expected any net inflows into ETFs. It currently expects around $5 billion in flows over twelve months, at a slower but more regular pace. The figure remains $22,000 lower than the end-2025 target posted in July 2025. It is neither the same horizon nor the same note: between the two, Citi targeted $181,000 at twelve months, then 143,000, before the cut to 82,000. Twelve months separate a forecast from its expiry, and there is a lot of ETF collection and unforeseen events. that no model sees coming.
Key Points
Citigroup raises its twelve-month Bitcoin target from $82,000 to $113,000; ether goes from 2,240 to 3,028 dollars
The note expects around $5 billion in crypto flows over twelve months, after a zero net inflow scenario in July
The coefficient of around 3.6% per billion ETFs dates from the summer 2025 model; it is not repeated as is this time
The team was targeting $135,000 by the end of 2025, a target never reached: the highest was around $126,000 at the beginning of October 2025
In Citi's model, ETF flows target Bitcoin
To construct its forecasts, Citi relies on a model where spot ETF flows weigh more heavily than everything else. By the summer of 2025, the bank had quantified this sensitivity. Thus, each billion dollars of net inflows would move the price by around 3.6%, and these flows would explain more than 40% of the recent variation. The balance of the equation mixes performance of US stocks, gold prices and adoption measured by the number of active addresses. Alex Saunders, who heads the establishment's quantitative research, signs the main notes.
The note of September 30 does not include this coefficient. It expects a recovery in inflows, slower but more regular, as advisors and brokers increase their allocations. A model so anchored to ETF entries first follows the appetite of American managers for a product listed on Wall Street. When the collection runs out of steam, the target goes down: this is what happened in July, when the bank went from 112,000 to 82,000 dollars and removed any net entry from its scenario. It rises as soon as subscriptions resume, which makes Citi's forecast a thermometer of institutional sentiment as much as a price target.
Crypto: what Citi is building behind its forecasts
At the same time, Citi is making progress on its own infrastructure. Citi Token Services already moves payments seamlessly between New York, London, Hong Kong and Singapore on a private blockchain, since expanded to other places, and the bank is preparing a digital asset custody service for its institutional clients. An agreement with Coinbase plugs its flows onto the crypto rails, since the end of September 2026, payments in USDC and interest-bearing accounts have been launched with the platform.
Jane Fraser had laid out the framework in front of analysts during results presentations. Thus, it seems that the bank is studying the issuance of a Citi stablecoin, but judges that there is too much attention on this product, and that the biggest opportunity lies on the side of tokenized deposits.
A tokenized deposit remains a bank deposit. It remains in the establishment's liabilities and retains its regulatory status, but circulates continuously on a blockchain, which spares Citi the legal headache of a stablecoin issued by a deposit bank. The Citi GPS research center estimated the stablecoin market at $1,600 billion in the central scenario by 2030 in its April 2025 note, and up to $3,700 billion in the bullish version. In September 2025, these two figures were raised to 1,900 and 4,000 billion.
