Wall Street still says Bitcoin can hit $100,000, the market is starting to doubt it

Standard Chartered maintained its call for Bitcoin to reach $100,000 by Dec. 31, even after the cryptocurrency briefly fell below $60,000 last week for the first time since October 2024.

Geoffrey Kendrick, the bank's global head of digital assets research, called the selloff “painful” but argued the bulk of selling may be over, adding that investors may later view the zone as the buying opportunity they wanted.

With Bitcoin trading around $63,400, reaching $100,000 by Dec. 31 would require roughly a 57.8% upside over approximately 206 days, about 0.22% compounded daily, or 7% per month.

Bitcoin has matched that pace before, but the market has repriced the probability of it happening again.

What's driving the damage

The selloff that took Bitcoin toward $60,000 was driven by record ETF outflows, Strategy's first Bitcoin sale since 2022, and forced liquidations totaling $1.8 billion in a single session.

The package drove the Crypto Fear and Greed Index to 12, leaving Bitcoin more than 51% below its October 2025 all-time high, as US-traded spot ETFs shed roughly $4.4 billion in 13 consecutive outflow sessions, while institutional money rotated into AI stocks.

Strategy's sale of 32 BTC hit the market as a psychological shock, triggering a selloff that the size of the sale did not justify. Kendrick acknowledged the timing was unfortunate but cited the company's history of buying back more than it sold after each prior sale.

Strategy disclosed a new purchase between Jun. 1 and Jun. 7, which Kendrick cited as evidence that the aggressive buying pattern he predicted had already begun.

The bank had cut its year-end target twice before that reaffirmation, from $300,000 in December to $150,000 in January, then to $100,000 in February, making the Jun. 4 post-crash hold its first since the drawdown accelerated.

Four conditions

The path to $100,000 requires four things to align, starting with ETF outflows no longer setting the marginal price. After a record 13-session outflow streak, flows turned slightly positive by early June, giving bulls a concrete reversal trigger to monitor.

Strategy has to remain a buyer, which the June purchase supports, and regulatory progress on the CLARITY Act has to re-enter the institutional calculus.

The fourth thing is that Bitcoin has to reclaim its key trend levels: the 30-day moving average near $75,685 and the 200-day moving average near $78,840 represent the technical threshold separating a crash recovery from a renewed uptrend.

Grayscale has argued that the four-year cycle thesis will prove wrong in this era of institutional capital, with steadier inflows replacing the old boom-bust rhythm, a view that would support a faster recovery than historical patterns imply.

Fidelity's analysts are split, with some supporting the supercycle thesis and others, such as macro director Jurrien Timmer, arguing that the traditional cycle pattern stays intact.

Bernstein set a $150,000 year-end target as recently as Mar. 24 and called the current drawdown the “weakest bear case in Bitcoin's history,” sitting on the more aggressive end of the still-bullish spectrum, though the firm has not freshly reaffirmed that call since the crash.

Citi's base case sits above $100,000 even after a March target reduction, and its bull case runs to approximately $166,000, though reaching either number from $63,400 requires 76.7% and 162% upside, respectively, making Standard Chartered's $100,000 the most defensible of the remaining institutional targets.

A cycle bottom that comes too late

Cycle analysts tracking the 2024 halving rhythm place the historical bottom window at approximately day 900 after the halving.

With the current cycle at day 775, there are roughly 125 days before that window opens, pointing to an October bottom, with prior cycles suggesting a low in the $40,000s.

Under that timing, a hypothetical bottom at $50,000 in October would require approximately 0.76% compounded daily through Dec. 31 to reach $100,000, which is over three times the daily pace implied by Standard Chartered's current target from today's price.

Prediction market traders on Kalshi assign a 66% probability that Bitcoin will drop below $55,000 this year and a 50% probability of sub-$50,000 prices.

A separate Kalshi market puts the probability of Bitcoin dropping under $50,000 this year at 52%, a level last seen in August 2024. Those odds reflect that capital rotating into AI stocks, semiconductor ETFs, and high-profile IPOs may be a lasting reallocation, with no obvious catalyst to pull it back into Bitcoin on a short timeline.

A sustained break below the $60,000 floor over multiple sessions, producing lower lows and lower highs, would shift traders' focus toward the $50,000 area and the 200-week moving average at $61,778, which Bitcoin touched last week for the first time since 2023.

The global regulatory backdrop sharpens that risk, as EU MiCA enforcement begins Jul. 1, after which crypto-asset service providers without a license must stop serving EU clients, removing a layer of regulatory optionality that had provided some institutional cover for holding the asset through uncertainty.

Where the probability stack sits

JPMorgan's fair-value model, built on a volatility-adjusted gold comparison, points toward $170,000, though that estimate predates the crash and functions as long-term context rather than a near-term price call.

Galaxy Digital's Alex Thorn reportedly trimmed his 2026 Bitcoin legislative passage estimate from 75% to 60% due to Senate calendar risk.

The resulting probability stack is Standard Chartered at $100,000, Bernstein's standing $150,000 target, Citi's reduced but still above $100,000 base case, and Kalshi's markets pricing only a 21% chance that Bitcoin crosses $100,000 before January 2027.

That disconnect between analyst targets and market-priced outcomes is the most accurate summary of where things stand.

The $100,000 call has shifted from a bull market assumption to a stress test of whether ETF demand, Strategy buying, regulatory momentum, and macro relief can overpower a damaged tape before the calendar runs out.

Standard Chartered's Geoffrey Kendrick is the only major institutional voice to have explicitly reaffirmed $100,000 after Bitcoin's crash below $60,000, with the next decisive test sitting at whether the asset can reclaim $75,000 before the four-year cycle's projected bottom window opens in October.

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