Standard Chartered’s Kendrick Says Bitcoin Has ‘Turned The Tide,’ Keeps $500K Target

• Standard Chartered's Geoff Kendrick said this on Saturday that this week had "turned the tide" for Bitcoin.
• He compared it to the March 2023 Silicon Valley Bank collapse that preceded a rally from $25,000 to above $100,000.
• Kendrick's call echoed macro investor Jordi Visser, who separately argued Bitcoin was an "anti-decay" hedge.

Standard Chartered’s Head of Digital Assets Research Geoffry 'Geoff' Kendrick said Bitcoin (BTC) was “heading back into crypto summer” after a week which he said “turned the tide” for the apex cryptocurrency.

Speaking in a Bloomberg interview on Saturday, Kendrick compared the moment to the March 2023 collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, which preceded Bitcoin’s rally from $25,000 to above $100,000. He said that the move came "at a time when everyone hated Bitcoin," and reinforced the cryptocurrency's core use case as a way to store wealth outside a system dependent on central authority.

"Whenever you have things like the Silicon Valley Bank example, March 2023, or things like US Treasury or Fed independence type stories coming up, for me that's the turn of the tide," Kendrick said.

BTC's price was down roughly 1% on Sunday, trading at the $76,500 level. On Stocktwits, the retail sentiment around BTC remained in the ‘extremely bullish’ zone, while chatter around it stayed at ‘extremely high’ levels over the past day.

$500K Target Stands

Kendrick said he was sticking with his forecasts that were “much higher, medium term.” Standard Chartered maintained a long-term Bitcoin target of $500,000, pushed from 2028 to 2030 last December, after cutting new projections.

He acknowledged that crypto had been overshadowed by AI-driven excitement and the initial public offering (IPO) season. "There's just been so many other easier things to make money," Kendrick said. "It's pretty exciting, and I would say crypto is back."

Building The Rails

Kendrick's bullish call arrived as Standard Chartered deepens its own crypto infrastructure. On Tuesday, the bank announced that it had completed the first live cross-border transaction using tokenized deposits on SWIFT’s blockchain-based ledger alongside HSBC, a milestone in connecting regulated bank money with distributed ledger technology. The transaction was a part of a broad pilot involving 17 banks across six continents.

Kendrick's view also aligned with a growing chorus of institutional voices calling the bottom this week, with macro investor Jordi Visser separately arguing that Bitcoin was an "anti-decay" hedge as AI-driven competition compressed returns across every traditional asset class.

Read also: Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse Calls CFTC’s New Crypto Panel An ‘Olympic Roster’

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