Winter Is Over, Spring Has Sprung: StanChart Plants a Flag at $59K 🌱

Standard Chartered analyst Geoffrey Kendrick told clients on Friday that bitcoin's slide to roughly $59,000 on June 5 marked the definitive bottom of the current crypto cycle, writing that "Winter is over. Welcome back to crypto Spring." The level represents a 53% drawdown from bitcoin's Oct. 6, 2025 all-time high of $126,000, and Kendrick has held a $100,000 year-end target for $BTC alongside a $4,000 target for $ETH, with a view that ether will outperform bitcoin on the way up. CoinDesk data shows bitcoin touched as low as $59,375 on June 5 around 18:00 UTC, while at the time of writing the asset hovered near $63,800 to $64,000.

Kendrick identified two catalysts that he believes ended the selling pressure. First, U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs bled roughly $4.3 billion to $5.72 billion across a record streak of 13 straight sessions of net outflows, a period Kendrick said coincided with ETF holders liquidating positions to free cash for SpaceX's initial public offering. Elon Musk's SpaceX began trading on Nasdaq on Friday at around $150 per share, with the stock about 26% above its IPO price and the offering valued at $75 billion as the largest listing in history; on Hyperliquid, SpaceX-linked crypto contracts traded with high volume at a valuation of up to $2.4 trillion. Second, Kendrick pointed to a potential G7-related U.S.–Iran peace deal, noting that President Trump on Thursday canceled planned strikes on Iran and said an agreement could be signed within days, ahead of the June 15–17 G7 summit in Evian; a truce could cap the oil rally that pushed U.S. Treasury yields higher and pressured risk assets, with crude futures already falling on Friday for a second straight session.

To confirm that the floor holds, Kendrick is watching three indicators: a Monday disclosure from Strategy (MSTR) showing the firm added to its bitcoin holdings last week, following Strategy executive chairman Michael Saylor's Sunday post reading "Still adding dots" alongside his signature chart; positive spot bitcoin ETF flows, with Friday's data tracked by SoSoValue showing a one-day net inflow of $85.84 million across five funds while eight saw no net change; and continued softness in oil prices.

Not all observers share Kendrick's conviction. Galaxy Research head of firmwide research Alex Thorn released a separate cycle study this week arguing that the four-year halving cycle is compressing and that only four of the 13 signals that marked every prior bottom have triggered so far. Thorn noted that past cycle drawdowns ranged from 77% to 85%, far steeper than the current 51% decline, and that previous bottoms arrived 12 to 13 months after each top, whereas this cycle sits just eight months past its October peak. Galaxy's base case puts the floor between $40,000 and $46,000, potentially arriving by late 2026, while Kendrick's own February note had floated a deeper capitulation near $50,000 as a possible buy zone before the June 5 low printed above it. Both firms, however, have now rejected the brutal roughly 80% collapses that closed every previous market cycle.