Standard Chartered: Bitcoin to rally to $120k by end of 2024

According to Standard Chartered, the value of bitcoin, the leading cryptocurrency, may reach $50,000 within this year and $120,000 by the end of 2024.

The recent surge in bitcoin's price is expected to motivate miners to hoard more of the cryptocurrency. Standard Chartered had previously predicted a price of $100,000 for bitcoin by the end of 2024, but now their FX analyst, Geoff Kendrick, believes there is a 20% upside to that estimate.

Kendrick explained that increased profitability for miners would allow them to sell fewer bitcoins while maintaining cash inflows, thus reducing the overall supply and driving prices higher. Despite an 80% increase since the beginning of the year, bitcoin's current price of slightly over $30,200 is still less than half of its peak value of $69,000 in November 2021.

The crypto market suffered significant losses in 2022 due to central bank rate hikes and the collapse of several crypto firms, but the recent collapse of traditional banks has contributed to the market's recovery.

Standard Chartered's prediction is based on the expectation that miners will need to sell fewer bitcoins in order to cover their costs, particularly the electricity required to power their supercomputers. Kendrick estimates that miners have been selling 100% of their newly minted coins, but if the price reaches $50,000, they would likely only sell 20-30% of their supply.

This reduction in selling would result in a net decrease in bitcoin supply of approximately 250,000 bitcoins per year. Additionally, in April or May, the daily mining output is set to be halved due to the cryptocurrency's supply and issuance mechanism.

It's worth noting that optimistic price predictions for bitcoin have been made in the past during its previous rallies, with one analyst from Citi suggesting a possible climb to $318,000 by the end of 2022, although it closed last year at around $16,500, representing a 65% decline.