Standard Chartered Says Bitcoin Price To Hit $120,000 By the End of 2024

Bitcoin’s strong recovery and performance this year in 2023 has forced several players to turn bullish on the cryptocurrency and joining the bandwagon is banking giant Standard Chartered.

In its latest report, Standard Chartered noted that the Bitcoin price is all set to surge to $50,000 by the year-end and shall further rally all the way to $120,000 by the end of 2024. Earlier this year in April 2023, the British multinational bank noted that the “crypto winter” was behind us while predicting that the BTC price could surge to $100,000 by the end of 2024.

In its recent report, Standard Chartered predicts that the recent surge in the Bitcoin price could encourage Bitcoin miners to hoard more Bitcoin. This would eventually lead to the shortage of supply for trading thereby creating a positive pressure on the Bitcoin price.

Standard Chartered FX analyst Geoff Kendrick said that an additional 20% upside is still possible on its previous price target of $100,000 to occur by the end of 2024. “Increased miner profitability per BTC (bitcoin) mined means they can sell less while maintaining cash inflows, reducing net BTC supply and pushing BTC prices higher," Kendrick said. 

Currently, mining creates 900 new Bitcoins every day. As the price of BTC rises, miners don't need to sell as much of their newly minted coins to cover their expenses. Standard Chartered believes this will motivate miners to hold onto their tokens in anticipation of even higher prices.

Kendrik explained that miners have been selling all of their new coins lately. However, if the price reaches $50,000, they may only need to sell 20-30% to sustain their operations.

“It is the equivalent of miners reducing the amount of bitcoins they sell per day to just 180-270 from 900 currently,” he said. “Over a year, that would reduce miner selling from 328,500 to a range of 65,700-98,550 – a reduction in net BTC supply of roughly 250,000 Bitcoins a year.”

Last year was typically tough for Bitcoin miners as the Bitcoin price came crashing down. The miners had to sell their Bitcoins in huge number to fund their operations.

In the future, another factor that may motivate miners to hold onto their BTC is the Bitcoin halving. This event, predicted to occur on April 16, 2024, reduces the number of new Bitcoins generated with each block. Currently, the block reward is 6.5 BTC, but after the halving, it will decrease to 3.25 BTC.

This means that only 450 BTC will be created daily. Historically, leading up to previous halvings, the price of Bitcoin has tended to reach a low point between 517 and 547 days before the event. This aligns with the recent bottom observed in the BTC market on November 19.