Bitcoin - Standard Chartereds revised projection and why THIS is no longer a price driver

Standard Chartereds Bitcoin prediction

$100,000 by the close of 2025- A

$90,000 at press time

Institutional buying fails to meet high expectations

Geoffrey Kendrick

Kendrick highlighted two major forces driving the recalibration.

First is corporate treasury exhaustion – The intense wave of corporate Bitcoin accumulation that defined 2024, led most prominently by Strategy, has largely run its course. This buying frenzy once acted as a powerful price floor for Bitcoin. However, with these treasuries now pausing or slowing their purchases, a critical source of market support has faded.

Second is the sharp deceleration in ETF inflows. While Spot Bitcoin ETFs were expected to fuel sustained institutional demand, their adoption has been meaningfully slower than early analyst projections.

The capital streaming into these vehicles has cooled down, falling well below the aggressive inflow models forecast at launch.

Together, these factors imply that two of the strongest structural demand engines for Bitcoin are no longer firing at full strength. This has forced analysts to reassess expectations for near-term price momentum.

What are datasets telling us？

50,000 coins right now.

450,000 BTC per quarter

entirely on ETF-related buying

Federal Reserve

Rejecting the traditional halving cycle

explicitly moves away

According to Matthew Sigel,

“With the advent of ETF buying, we think the BTC halving cycle is no longer a relevant price driver. The logic in previous cycles (when US ETFs did not exist) – i.e., prices would peak about 18 months after each halving and decline thereafter – is no longer valid, in our view.”

Sigel added,

“However, it will take a break of the current all-time high (USD 126,000 on 6 October 2025) to prove that; we expect this to happen in H1-2026.”