Cryptocurrencies rise on Standard Chartered price forecast

Some hope returned to Bitcoin’s pricing outlook after Standard Chartered bank forecasted in a Monday report the token would hit $50,000 by the end of this year and $120,000 at the end of 2024

Bitcoin increased on Tuesday to hold above $30,000, helped by U.K.’s Standard Chartered Plc forecasting the token will reach $120,000 by the end of 2024. Other cryptocurrencies also rose, with Polygon’s Matic token leading the rally. U.S. equity futures also advanced in the Asia time zone on Tuesday after Federal Reserve said the bank’s monetary tightening cycle is nearing a close.

Bitcoin added 0.79 per cent over the past 24 hours to $30,392. The original cryptocurrency has recently wavered near the $30,000 mark but prices dropped late last week on mixed signals about the possibility of approval for Bitcoin spot ETF. The token is still seeing weekly loss of 2.35 per cent, as per data from CoinMarketCap.

However, some hope returned to Bitcoin’s pricing outlook after Standard Chartered bank forecasted in a Monday report the token would hit $50,000 by the end of this year and $120,000 at the end of 2024, as per Reuters on Tuesday.

With Bitcoin’s next halving event to occur next April, lower Bitcoin supply could increase prices and in turn prompt miners to hoard the token, according to the Standard Chartered report. Higher miner profitability per bitcoin mined means they can sell less while maintaining cash inflows, lessening net bitcoin supply and pushing bitcoin prices further, as per the report.

Another plus for prices: cryptocurrency-linked investment products saw net inflows of $136mln in the week ending July 7, marking the third successive week of inflows and fully correcting the previous nine weeks of outflows, as per European cryptocurrency investment company CoinShares on Monday.

Bitcoin remains the focus amongst investors, with inflows amounting $133m last week, while short-bitcoin saw outflows of $1.8m, its 11th consecutive week, further showing investors prefer the asset over altcoins at present, stated CoinShares in the report.

Ether increased 1.00 per cent to $1,880, but it is still 3.80 per cent lower for the week.

Most other top cryptocurrencies saw gains during the last 24 hours with the exception of Dogecoin and Solana’s SOL, which both slid but the declines were less than 0.5 per cent.

Polygon’s Matic led the advancers, climbing 6.97 per cent to $0.7356 and gaining 3.33 per cent for the week.

Some positive on-chain signs for the 12th ranked market cap asset include rebounding network growth, lower supply on exchanges, and low profit taking, tweeted crypto data tracker Santiment on early Tuesday, adding the token is on a “mini-run.”

Matic’s recent run up comes as Polygon Labs revealed its Polygon 2.0 roadmap on June 30, promising to become the “Value Layer of the Internet” and on Friday appointed the company’s former chief legal officer Marc Boiron as its new CEO.

However, the token has had a rough time in 2023, down nearly 2 per cent, and has a lot to make up on other cryptos such as Solana, which has climbed 115 per cent so far in 2023. Polkadot has advanced 18 per cent during the same period.

The total crypto market cap rose 0.81 per cent during the last 24 hours to $1.18trln, while trading volume soared 70.03 per cent to $33.54bln.