Bitcoin Headed for 'Best Ever' Second Half of the Year: Standard Chartered

Bitcoin could be headed for its "best ever" second half of a year thanks to strong institutional interest and treasury buying, wrote Standard Chartered Geoff Kendrick in a note Wednesday just hours before the asset topped $109,000 for the first time in three weeks.

The analyst for the U.K.-based bank expects the current quarter and fourth quarter acquisitions each separately to surpass Q2's robust 245,000 BTC and wrote that the asset is headed for a record above its previous high of $111,814, set in May.  "Bitcoin to print new all-time highs in H2," Kendrick wrote.

He added that's because BTC has moved beyond its usual pattern of falling prices for the 18 months following a halving event—"which would have led to price declines in September-October 2025."

But it won't all be smooth sailing, he cautioned.

"We think prices could be choppy in late Q3 and early Q4 amid concerns about this pattern being repeated," hew rote. "However, we expect prices to resume their uptrend, supported by continued strong ETF and Bitcoin treasury buying."

He noted that both the BTC treasury company support and ETFs were absent in all the previous halving cycles.

Bitcoin treasury companies have proliferated in recent months, following the lead of longer-standing BTC buyers like MetaPlanet and most of all, Strategy

Bitcoin was recently trading at about $109,459 after having gained 3.1% in the past day. It's trading 2.2% above where it was a week ago, according to CoinGecko data.

Spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds pulled back on Tuesday, shedding $342 million in assets and ending a 15-day streak of gains, according to U.K. asset manager Farside Investors. But those funds now manage more than $130 billion in assets with BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) growing faster than any product in the ETF industry's 32-year history. IBIT manages more than $70 billion in assets.

A growing list of 141 publicly traded companies now hold 849,400 Bitcoin with a current valuation of more than $92 billion, based on bitcointreasuries.net data.

Strategy pioneered the Bitcoin treasury strategy, pivoting from its software development focus in 2020. The Nasdaq-traded company, which has been purchasing Bitcoin on a near weekly basis for much of the year, now possesses more than 597,000 Bitcoin worth about $65 billion.

Crypto markets have largely shrugged off concerns about the U.S.'s ongoing global trade war and President Donald Trump's harsh criticisms of U.S. central bank Chair Jerome Powell for not cutting interest rates.

Speaking at a European Central Bank forum in Portugal, Powell acknowledged the Fed would have already begun cutting rates this year absent President Donald Trump's trade policies.

Edited by James Rubin