The success and popularity of Bitcoin spot ETFs will be the most important factor for the major cryptocurrency in the long term. Taking into account what is happening, Standard Chartered bank analysts are confident that under such conditions, the cost of BTC may well reach the level of $200 thousand by the end of next year. The bank bases its price forecast on the assumption that by the end of 2024, between 437 thousand and 1.32 million bitcoins will be held by spot ETF managers in the US.

Jeff Kendrick, head of digital assets at Standard Chartered, and precious metals analyst Suki Cooper commented on Bitcoin’s prospects in the bank’s latest report. Here is the corresponding replica from this document.

If inflows into the ETF grow as we expect, we believe the BTC price will reach levels close to $200k by the end of 2025.

The predicted rise in price of the cryptocurrency will not be linear – on the way to the next historical highs, Bitcoin will go through at least several strong corrections. The first of them could happen as early as March 2024, notes former head of the BitMEX crypto exchange Arthur Hayes.

A major role was also played by the general growth of activity in the BTC network, which was also caused by the popularization of an analogue of NFT tokens based on the Ordinals protocol, which allows you to “enter” certain information such as text, images or video directly into the Bitcoin blockchain.

It is important to understand that the influx of funds into the niche will not only affect asset prices, but will also lead to a more dramatic development of protocols and decentralized platforms. So, in theory, 2024 and the following years could turn out to be truly positive for crypto investors.