Bitcoin to reach USD 120,000 by 2024 – Standard Chartered

Bitcoin (BTC) to end the year with USD 50,000 price tag–65% above current price. Shift is driven by miner profitability. Crypto to reach USD 120,000 by the end of next year. Prediction

Original story by Marc Jones for Reuters

British multinational bank Standard Chartered has forecasted a jump in BTC to USD 50,000 by year’s end, the bank announced Tuesday. The price jump could encourage miners to hoard

Earlier this year, the same bank forecasted that BTC would reach USD 100,000 by the end of 2024 as the ‘crypto winter’ ends. Standard Chartered’s Geoff Kendrick said that miners could benefit from this change.

“Increased miner profitability per BTC mined means they can sell less while maintaining cash inflows, reducing net BTC supply and pushing BTC prices higher,” Kendrick said in a report.

Bitcoin’s price has increased by 80% since the start of the year, but current levels of just over $30,200 are still below than half the $69,000-peak the crypto made in November of 2021.

Standard Chartered rationalized the price increase, saying that miners who rake in 900 new BTCs everyday would soon need to sell fewer to cover production costs. Kendrick furthered that miners were recently selling all of their new coins, but if the price hits $50,000, selling would be cut down by 70%

“It is the equivalent of miners reducing the amount of bitcoins they sell per day to just 180-270 from 900 currently. 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,”

Next year, the daily limit of the BTCs mined will be cut in half by April of May–this is due to a built-in mechanism of the entire exchange.

Bitcoin had been predicted to reach six figures several times in the past. A Citi analyst said in November 2020 that bitcoin could climb as high as $318,000 by the end of 2022. It closed last year down about 65% at $16,500.