While the financial world waits to see when and which Bitcoin spot ETF applications receive approval, Standard Chartered Bank issued a prediction on Monday that the price of Bitcoin will top $200,000 by the end of 2025.
“If ETF-related inflows materialise as we expect, we think an end-2025 level closer to [$200,000] is possible,” the head of financial research at Standard Chartered Bank, Geoffrey Kendrick, said in a note to investors.
Bitcoin ETFs track the current price of Bitcoin and are designed to follow Bitcoin’s price swings, giving investors exposure without the need to buy and store the digital asset itself. Bitcoin ETFs are managed by an investment firm that holds the Bitcoin.
BlackRock, Grayscale, Ark, iShares, Bitwise, VanEck, Wisdomtree, Invesco, Fidelity, and Franklin have ETFs in the final approval process.
Kendrick said the 2025 prediction is consistent with their previous estimates of $100,000 by the end of 2024.
“ETF approval is a key driver of BTC price upside,” Kendrick said. “We see this as a watershed moment for normalizing Bitcoin participation by institutional money, and we expect approval to drive significant inflow and price upside for BTC.”
Kendrick’s statement coincides with that of Bloomberg senior ETF analyst Eric Balchunas, who said on Thursday that a Bitcoin ETF could see $100 million in a decade.
“A couple of billion will be a solid New Year for any category, but I’d be a little more optimistic than that, like maybe $10 billion in year one,” Balchunas said.
“It’s the short-term that is hard to predict here. In the medium term, we do see this, maybe in the ballpark of [$30 billion] to [$50 billion] over three years,” he continued. “And then maybe it settles to where gold is at about $100 billion over five to ten years.”
On Saturday, Balchunas put the odds of a Bitcoin ETF being approved by the SEC in January at 95% in a post on Twitter.
“I probably go with 5% at this point. But you gotta leave a little window open for these things,” Balchunas said.
Edited by Ryan Ozawa.