9 January 2024
Standard Chartered Bank is the latest to give its predictions on the impact Spot Bitcoin ETFs could have on Bitcoin’s price in the long term. The bank took a bullish stance as they predicted that BTC could rise to unprecedented heights by the end of 2025.
Bitcoin Could Hit $200,000 By End Of 2024
According to a report by Standard Chartered shared on the X (formerly Twitter) platform, BTC’s price could reach $200,000 by end-2025. There is the potential for Bitcoin to hit this price level with $50 to $100 billion flowing into the Spot Bitcoin ETFs, says the bank’s Head of Digital Assets Research Geoff Kendrick and Precious Metal Analyst Suki Cooper.
Their projections stem from the fact that an approval of these Spot Bitcoin ETFs could happen as soon as this week. If that happens, Kendrick and Cooper state that will be a key driver of Bitcoin’s price to the upside, something similar to what happened with Gold ETPs. Interestingly, Standard Chartered predicts that BTC could hit $100,000 before this year runs out.
Elaborating on BTC enjoying similar gains to Gold (when Gold ETPs were approved), the bank expects that such gains will materialize over a shorter period for the flagship crypto token. This is based on their view that the Spot BTC ETF market will develop quicker than the Gold ETPs did.
The amount of inflows that these Spot Bitcoin ETFs could witness has continued to be up for debate. Crypto research firm Galaxy Digital took a more conservative stance as they project that only about $14 billion will flow into these funds in the first year. Meanwhile, VanEck’s advisor, Gabor Gurbacs, is only choosing to look at the long term.
“Trillions, Not Billions” In The Long Term
Commenting on Standard Chartered’s report, Gurbacs mentioned that he prefers to look at how much could flow into these funds in the longer term rather than now. With that in mind, he projects that trillions of dollars will flow into Spot Bitcoin ETFs in the long term. Specifically, he makes a case for $2.5 trillion flowing into these BTC assets.
He explained that this could easily happen, considering that there are roughly $500 trillion in assets globally. As such, $2.5 trillion, representing just 0.5% of the global allocation, flowing into the Bitcoin ecosystem shouldn’t be a problem. He also bases his projection on the fact that Bitcoin won’t stop rising in value as fiat currencies continue to weaken. BTC has no top because fiat has no bottom, he says.
Gurbacs also expects that Bitcoin will enjoy more acceptance once these Spot Bitcoin ETFs are approved. He says that banks, financial service firms, and regulators will turn from “enemies of Bitcoin to allies of Bitcoin.” This is “immeasurably valuable” as BTC adoption can level, he remarked.