Standard Chartered analyst Jeffrey Kendrick says Bitcoin could still face a final wash to $50,000 to recover sharply, arguing that the current decline is more macro-based than a specific crypto-defeat to tech capitulation.
Speaking on Deribit’s Crypto Options Unplugged, Kendrick, the bank’s global head of digital asset research, said he still expects Bitcoin to end the year at $100,000 and reach $500,000 by 2030, even as he warned that the near-term setup remains volatile.
“Picking down is always extremely difficult,” said Kendrick, who made his latest sales outside of a mostly volatile few weeks. He said institutional positioning was better than many had expected and pointed to the ETF’s relatively sticky exposure, and continued to buy MicroStrategy even after the stock’s premium to net asset value per index declined.
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However, Kendrick said the market can’t be ignored. “I think we may still see that eventual capitulation. Now, it may be macro-based,” he said. “Bitcoin and crypto assets broadly have a very high correlation with the Nasdaq.” In his opinion, weaker earnings from big US tech names over the next few months, combined with a lack of immediate support from the Federal Reserve, could push crypto down along with stocks.
That, he says, is what makes the $50,000 level acceptable. Kendrick compared the potential move to the previous period’s decline, noting that the decline into this area would still be slower than the nearly 75% decline from the previous period’s peak. The key difference this time, he said, is the absence of a major internal cryptographic failure at the scale of FTX.
Why is Kendrick long on bitcoin?
However, Kendrick’s medium-term and long-term thesis remains decidedly bullish. He attributed this outlook less to short-term trading flows than to what he sees as a structural shift by stablecoins and actual tokenized assets. Last year, when stablecoins were around $200 billion, Kendrick predicted that they could grow to $2 trillion by the end of 2028. He said the market is now close to $300 billion, and much of that demand is not coming from crypto trading, but from use cases of savings in emerging markets.
“What has changed was primarily the savings in emerging markets,” Kendrick said, referring to stablecoins’ original role as silent ramps for crypto trading. “From my estimate of $300 billion, about $200 (billion) is to use EM deposits.” He added that much of this capital appears to be sitting in large wallets and is rarely returned, suggesting that it is used more as stored value than transaction float.
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Kendrick’s broader argument is that this trend could have macro implications beyond crypto. If stablecoin issuers absorb about $1 trillion in additional bills over the next three years, he said, the U.S. Treasury could respond by moving issuance to the front, flattening the yield curve and strengthening demand for the dollar. In his statement, this liquidity effect could eventually become a tailwind for risk assets, including Bitcoin.
“I think we’re going to go to $50,000 and get back to $100,000 by the end of this year and $500,000 by 2030,” Kendrick said. “Ironically, if stablecoins are huge and the Genius Act is the way it is, the influx of cash in terms of liquidity and the flattening of the income line and all that sort of thing is massively supportive of Bitcoin in the medium term.”
He extended that optimism to other large-cap crypto assets. Kendrick said he sees Ethereum reaching $40,000 and Solana reaching $2,000 by 2030, with Ethereum benefiting from steady coin activity and tokenization and Solana benefiting from ultra-low-cost transaction flows and micropayments. He also predicted that real assets in the world could grow from about $40 billion to $2 trillion by the end of 2028.
At the same time, Kendrick’s message was less about following momentum than about separating the market price from the underlying reception. “Almost every major metric, if you will, is improving,” he said. “Except for the price.”
At press time, Bitcoin was at $70,260.
Featured image from YouTube, chart from TradingView.com
