Bitcoin Could Reach $135,000 Soon: Standard Chartered

Bitcoin could reach a new all-time high as soon as next week and keep climbing to $135,000, Standard Chartered's Global Head of Digital Assets Research said in a new note shared with Decrypt.

Yesterday Bitcoin soared above $121,000, keeping stride with a Q4 pattern that’s been coined “Uptober.” Early Friday morning BTC was trading for around $120,420, 1.3% higher than this time yesterday, according to data from crypto price aggregator CoinGecko.

Although BTC looks to be keeping its Uptober tradition, Standard Chartered's Geoff Kendrick said it has ditched its pattern of seeing prices fall 18 months after the halving. If that had been the case, the April 2024 halving would have been followed by price weakness now.

There are other factors at play, he wrote.

“The shutdown matters this time around,” Kendrick said. “During the previous Trump shutdown (22 Dec 2018 to 25 Jan 2019) Bitcoin was in a different place than now, so it did little. However, this year Bitcoin has traded with ‘U.S. government risks’ as best shown by its relationship to U.S. treasury term premium.”

The recent gains have users on Myriad, a prediction market owned by Decrypt parent company DASTAN, increasingly confident that BTC will maintain this price level over the next two weeks. About 49% of users think Bitcoin will be above $120,000 by October 15. That’s a stark increase from two days ago, when just 20% of users thought BTC would be in that range mid-month.

Kendrick added that he expects institutional demand to increase through the end of the year.

“Net Bitcoin ETF inflows are now at $58 billion, of which $23 billion has been in 2025,” he wrote. “I would expect at least another $20 billion by year-end, a number which would make my $200,000 [BTC] year-end forecast possible.”