Bitcoin could reach $50,000 this year and $120,000 by the end of 2024 as crypto miners begin stockpiling the digital asset, according to analysts at Standard Chartered.
The British bank previously forecasted bitcoin would reach the $100,000 mark by the end of next year, but now Standard Chartered analyst Geoff Kendrick said there is a 20% "upside" to the original prediction.
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The rationale behind the price prediction is miners who are minting the 900 new bitcoins produced each day would soon need to sell less to manage overhead, the bank said.
Meanwhile, the number of bitcoin being mined in April and May 2024 will be set to halve due to an inbuilt supply and issuance mechanism that gradually limits supply to maintain its appeal.
If the price of bitcoin rises to around $50,000 expected by the end of 2023, "the share of newly mined being sold should fall to 20 to 30%," Kendrick wrote in the report.
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"Increased miner profitability per BTC (bitcoin) mined means they can sell less while maintaining cash inflows, reducing net BTC supply and pushing BTC prices higher."
U.S. acceptance of bitcoin mining has seen a rise in large U.S.-listed miners, according to the report.
Year to date, the digital asset’s price has ballooned more than 80% and now sits at roughly $30,384, well below its $69,000 high mark reached in November 2021.
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Since then, the cryptocurrency sector has been rocked by the fall of FTX and Binance’s suspension of U.S. deposits after the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) accused the exchange of operating a "web of deception."
While digital asset exchanges have been under fire, bitcoin, the industry's largest asset, recently traded above the $31,000 level and has been embraced by traditional finance companies like BlackRock, which filed for a Bitcoin ETF with the SEC in June.
