Standard Chartered still sees bitcoin hitting $500,000 despite recent selloff

Standard Chartered's bullish crypto analyst still sees bitcoin's price hitting $500,000 during Donald Trump's presidency — even after a selloff that sank the world's largest digital currency to a three-month low. Geoffrey Kendrick, who heads up digital assets research at Standard Chartered, told CNBC he believes bitcoin will hit the $200,000 mark this year before climbing even further in the coming years. "Within the crypto ecosystem, what we need are traditional financial players, like Standard Chartered , like BlackRock and others that have the ETFs now to really step in," Kendrick said in an interview with CNBC's "Squawk Box Europe" Thursday. "As the industry becomes more institutionalized, it should be safer," Kendrick said, adding that this should result in fewer negative headlines — such as the recent $1.5 billion hack on cryptocurrency exchange Bybit last week. This increase in crypto adoption by institutions, coupled with some "regulatory clarity" in the U.S., should lead t ... Read full article.