Standard Chartered's crypto bull sticks to $100,000 bitcoin call despite 'painful' week

June 4 (Reuters) - Geoffrey Kendrick, 1 of the astir vocal crypto advocates, is sticking with his telephone for bitcoin to deed $100,000 by the extremity of ‌the twelvemonth contempt a "painful" week, with the planetary caput of integer assets probe ‌at Standard Chartered pointing to resilient semipermanent demand.

The biggest crypto token has tumbled much than 15% since Monday, ​when Michael Saylor's Strategy, the largest firm holder of bitcoin, disclosed that it had sold immoderate of the holdings for the archetypal clip since 2022.

"The timing of the merchantability was a shame," Kendrick wrote successful a enactment to clients. "This week has been achy successful crypto. There ‌is truly nary different mode ⁠of putting it."

The cryptocurrency has mislaid much than fractional its worth since hitting a highest successful October past year, adjacent arsenic President Donald ⁠Trump's medication has rolled retired industry-friendly policies.

Kendrick said determination is simply a hazard of further selling unit if bitcoin falls beneath $60,000, but fixed however sharply the currency has underperformed equities this year, ​there are ​now less bullish bets near to beryllium unwound.

Bitcoin ​was past trading astir $62,540. It has ‌lost astir 30% truthful acold this year, portion the S&P 500 scale has jumped 10.4%.

However, "when we look backmost astatine the extremity of 2026 with bitcoin astatine $100k we volition accidental this was the buying portion we each wanted," Kendrick said.

He besides expects an "aggressive" buying backmost of bitcoin from Strategy, citing that the institution did truthful the past clip it sold.

Strategy's ‌bitcoin holdings person agelong been viewed arsenic a ​proxy for Saylor's condemnation successful the industry. One of ​bitcoin's astir influential evangelists, helium erstwhile ​posted connected X, "Sell a kidney if you must, but support the ‌Bitcoin."

The institution said connected Monday that proceeds ​from the merchantability of ​bitcoin would beryllium utilized to money distributions connected its preferred stock. But the disclosure of the merchantability drew the ire of immoderate connected societal media.

Strategy's banal has ​dropped astir 17% successful ‌2026. The banal gained astir 14% betwixt January and October past year, but ​later fell successful tandem with the monolithic diminution successful bitcoin prices.

(Reporting by Niket ​Nishant successful Bengaluru; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila)