Standard Chartered's $500K Bitcoin Bet Stays Alive While Trump Warns: "If We Don't Have It, China's Going to Have It" 🪙

Standard Chartered's Head of Digital Assets Research Geoffrey Kendrick is holding firm on his $500,000 Bitcoin price prediction before President Trump leaves office, even as $BTC trades above $64,000, roughly 49% below the $126,198 all-time high set in October 2025. Kendrick first laid out the trajectory on Deribit's Crypto Options Unplugged podcast, projecting $100,000 by end-2026 and $500,000 by 2030, alongside his outlook on stablecoins.

Trump's renewed public endorsement of Bitcoin at a White House event on July 6 has pulled Standard Chartered's long-term forecast back into the spotlight. Speaking at the event, the president framed digital asset dominance as a sovereignty issue rather than a purely financial one, stating: "And Bitcoin, nobody even understands how powerful it is. The capital flows, nobody understands how powerful it is." He identified competition with China as "the main reason" for his support, declaring: "If we don't have it, China's going to have it."

The China framing carries specific policy weight, given that China has maintained one of the world's strictest bans on crypto trading and mining since 2021 while developing its own central bank digital currency. Trump's argument that ceding the digital asset space to geopolitical rivals would impose strategic costs on the US gives the White House's pro-crypto posture a national security anchor that is harder to walk back than a market-driven endorsement. That framing reinforces the regulatory tailwind underpinning Kendrick's $BTC price target, pairing legislative clarity under a sympathetic administration with expanded institutional access.

The structural question facing the thesis is what it takes for the $500,000 call to remain credible after Standard Chartered already missed its $200,000 target for 2025. $BTC was last reported at $64,200.54, up 2.52% over 24 hours. Kendrick's long-term call rests on the assumption that policy momentum, institutional adoption and competitive pressure from state-backed digital currency projects continue to align in Bitcoin's favor through the remainder of Trump's term.