At a White House event on July 6, President Donald Trump reframed his support for Bitcoin in explicitly geopolitical terms, arguing that ceding ground in digital assets would hand China a strategic advantage, a posture that has renewed attention on Standard Chartered’s standing forecast.
This was maintained by Global Head of Digital Assets Research Geoffrey Kendrick, who said Bitcoin would reach $500,000 before Trump’s term concludes. With BTC trading near $64,000 at the time of the Yahoo Finance report published July 9, that target implies a roughly 7.8× move from current levels.
This is not simply a price call. It is an institutional thesis about the interaction between sovereign adoption, ETF-driven inflows, and a policy environment that has shifted materially since January 2025, and it now carries the added variable of a president who has publicly staked national security credibility on crypto’s success.
Trump Crypto Stance: The China Framing and Its Limits
Trump’s remarks at the July 6 event were direct. “And Bitcoin, nobody even understands how powerful it is. The capital flows, nobody understands how powerful it is,” he said, according to the primary source. He identified geopolitical competition as the central driver of his support: “If we don’t have it, China’s going to have it.”
The framing is strategically useful but analytically imprecise. China has maintained one of the world’s strictest bans on crypto trading and mining since 2021, while continuing to develop its own central bank digital currency (CBDC).
Trump’s invocation of China is better read as a regulatory-philosophy argument, crypto as a domain of American financial primacy, than as a description of active competitive pressure in the spot market.
Still, the political signal matters for the BTC price 2026 outlook. Trump’s regulatory agenda since returning to office has provided a policy tailwind that Kendrick’s model depends on, according to the bank’s published research.
Ongoing legislative uncertainty around crypto regulation remains a structural backdrop to that thesis, though progress has been complicated by ongoing disputes, according to reports.
$BTC is back into the $64,000-$65,000 resistance zone.
A reclaim of the $65,000 level could push Bitcoin to $68,000.
A rejection from the current resistance level means BTC will likely revisit $62,000 again. pic.twitter.com/ZunXx7V7MJ
— Ted (@TedPillows) July 10, 2026
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The $500K Bitcoin Forecast: Where Standard Chartered’s House View Actually Stands
Kendrick first announced a $500,000 forecast for Bitcoin during a February 2025 appearance on CNBC. He projected that Bitcoin would reach $200,000 within that year and $500,000 before Trump left office. However, the 2025 target was significantly missed, as Bitcoin’s all-time high was $126,198 in October, falling well short of the $200,000 goal.
Subsequent research indicated that Standard Chartered revised its 2026 year-end target downward to $100,000 in early 2026. According to a December 2025 research note from Standard Chartered, the bank officially pushed the $500,000 milestone to 2030, having initially aimed for 2028.
Interesting predictions from a TradFi giant like Standard Chartered:
– DeFi TVL about to 37x
– $UNI to $100
– $ETH to $40,000
– $BTC to $500,000
While most of these price targets are obviously on the delusional side, what excites me most is the simple fact that one of the… https://t.co/TCfNNiuFzN
— Simon Dedic (@sjdedic) June 16, 2026
The revision was attributed to a reduced presence of corporate treasury buyers and slower-than-expected inflows from Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs). Despite these adjustments, Standard Chartered and Kendrick have maintained their belief in the long-term $500,000 target throughout 2026.
The bank’s updated rationale hinges on the anticipated adoption of Bitcoin by sovereign wealth funds and state pension funds, which are seen as the next wave of institutional investors.
Currently, Standard Chartered’s year-end target for 2026 is set at $100,000, representing the conservative end of the analyst spectrum. The bank’s broader bullish stance on digital assets indicates that its Bitcoin thesis is part of a systematic view on cryptocurrency adoption rather than an isolated prediction.
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Daniel Frances is a technical writer and Web3 educator specializing in macroeconomics and DeFi mechanics. A crypto native since 2017, Daniel leverages his background in on-chain analytics to author evidence-based reports and deep-dive guides. He holds certifications from The Blockchain Council, and is dedicated to providing “information gain” that cuts through market hype to find real-world blockchain utility.
