Bitcoin’s $100K Forecast May Be Too Low After Record Short Squeeze

Key Takeaways

• Standard Chartered says its $100,000 bitcoin forecast may be too low.
• Bitcoin climbed to $79,500 on Aug. 21, its highest level since May.
• Bitcoin ETF inflows reached approximately $1.92 billion over five sessions.

Record Short Liquidations Reshape Bitcoin Outlook

Bitcoin’s sharp recovery has raised the possibility that Geoffrey Kendrick’s $100,000 year-end forecast may prove too conservative, the Standard Chartered analyst wrote in research provided directly on Aug. 21. Kendrick is global head of digital assets research at Standard Chartered Bank. He said rising prices had forced traders to close bearish positions while encouraging renewed demand from longer-term investors.

The scale of the reversal led Kendrick to describe the week as bitcoin’s largest short-liquidation event in the available record. The accompanying 90-day chart from Coinglass shows BTC short liquidations approaching $1.44 billion during the Aug. 19-21 rally, the largest daily total shown during that window. Kendrick noted that Coinglass data extending back to June 2021 ranked this as the largest BTC short-liquidation event in the dataset.

The Standard Chartered head of digital assets research connected the record short liquidations with growing upside risk for his year-end target, stating: