Crypto winter is over — and bitcoin could hit $100,000 by the end of 2024, Standard Chartered says
Bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency, has been stealthily rising in 2023.
Chris Ratcliffe | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Bitcoin’s value could jump to as much as $100,000 by the end of 2024, Standard Chartered said in a note published Monday.
The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and other mid-tier U.S. lenders has solidified the case for bitcoin as a “decentralised, trustless and scarce digital asset,” Standard Chartered analyst Geoff Kendrick said in the note.
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“We see potential for Bitcoin (BTC) to reach the USD 100,000 level by end-2024, as we believe the much-touted ‘crypto winter’ is finally over,” Kendrick said in the report, titled “Bitcoin — Pathway to the USD 100,000 level.”
“The current stress in the traditional banking sector is highly conducive to BTC outperformance – and validates the original premise for Bitcoin as a decentralised, trustless and scarce digital asset,” Kendrick added.
“Given these advantages, we think BTC’s share of total digital assets market cap could move into the 50-60% range in the next few months (from around 45% currently).”
Bitcoin was trading at $27,601.55 as of 9:40 a.m. ET, according to CoinGecko data.
The woes of Circle’s USD Coin and other so-called stablecoins, which aim to achieve a 1-to-1 peg to the U.S. dollar, has also benefited bitcoin, Kendrick said.
USDC lost its peg to the dollar after its issuer Circle revealed exposure to SVB. The coin has since regained its $1 value, however its total market value has fallen to $30.7 billion from more than $43 billion since Mar. 10 when the bank was placed into receivership by the U.S. government, according to CoinGecko data.
This, coupled with a stabilization of risk assets and speculation that the Federal Reserve will ease monetary tightening further, means the “pathway to the USD 100,000 level is becoming clearer,” Kendrick said.
Proponents of bitcoin maintain the digital currency is an asset worth diversifying into in times of economic distress. As the theory goes, bitcoin has a limited supply of 21 million bitcoins, meaning it should appreciate as demand for alternative assets grows to avoid the effects of high inflation.
The cryptocurrency failed that test last year when it plunged 65%, marking the second-worse year for bitcoin of all time amid a tumultuous backdrop of multibillion-dollar flameouts such as FTX and Terra and regulatory clampdowns.
More recently, however, the token has been climbing, suggesting a recovery may be on the cards. Bitcoin is up 66% since the start of the year — though it has fallen sharply since breaching $30,000 two weeks ago.
“The associated price jump – from below USD 20,000 before the SVB issues to above USD 30,000 – has dramatically increased the profitability of Bitcoin mining companies,” Kendrick wrote.
Bitcoin miners are volunteers who allocate computing power toward solving complex cryptographic puzzles in order to verify transactions are genuine and mint new units of currency.
“With the price of BTC now well above our USD 15,000 estimate of direct costs, miners are unlikely to sell many coins,” Kendrick said, noting that this would be a positive development for the cryptocurrency as miners are a major driving force for the market given the size of their holdings.
“The broader macro backdrop for risky assets is also gradually improving as the FOMC nears the end of its tightening cycle. While BTC can trade well when risky assets suffer, correlations to the Nasdaq suggest that it should trade better if risky assets improve broadly.”
Bitcoin’s price outlook
Standard Chartered isn’t the only one predicting a strong rally of bitcoin’s price. Last month, at a blockchain conference in Paris, multiple crypto industry insiders forecast bitcoin hitting a new all-time high in 2023 — with an executive at U.S.-headquartered cryptocurrency exchange Gemini telling CNBC $100,000 could be a possibility.
Last year, CNBC quizzed multiple venture capitalists, investors and analysts on how they think the digital currency will perform in 2023. On the bullish end of the spectrum, Draper Associates founder and noted bitcoin bull Tim Draper said he thought the cryptocurrency could reach $250,000.
Ironically, on the bearish end, Standard Chartered said that the cryptocurrency could tumble as low as $5,000 in a list of market surprise for 2023.
Some crypto investors are pointing to anticipation of the next so-called bitcoin “halving,” which reduces the rewards to bitcoin miners by 50%, as a potential catalyst for another monster rally in the coin’s price.
— CNBC’s Arjun Kharpal contributed to this report
Charles Liang, chief executive officer of Super Micro Computer Inc., during the Computex conference in Taipei, Taiwan, on Wednesday, June 5, 2024. The trade show runs through June 7.
Annabelle Chih | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Embattled server maker Super Micro Computer said on Monday that it’s hired BDO as its new auditor and submitted a plan to Nasdaq detailing its efforts to regain compliance with the exchange. The shares jumped 23% in extended trading.
“This is an important next step to bring our financial statements current, an effort we are pursuing with both diligence and urgency,” Super Micro CEO Charles Liang said in a statement.
Super Micro is late in filing its 2024 year-end report with the SEC, and said earlier this month that it was looking for a new accountant after its previous auditor, Ernst & Young, stepped down in October. Ernst & Young was new to the job, having just replaced Deloitte & Touche as Super Micro’s accounting firm in March 2023.
Super Micro said it told Nasdaq that it believes it will be able to file its annual report for the year ended June 30, and quarterly report for the period ended Sept. 30. The company said it will remain listed on the Nasdaq pending the exchange’s “review of the compliance plan.”
Shares of Super Micro soared more than twentyfold over a two year period from early 2022 until their peak in March of this year. But the stock has been hammered on troubling news about its compliance with Nasdaq. Once valued at about $70 billion, the company’s market cap was at $12.6 billion at the close on Monday, following a 16% rally during regular trading.
Super Micro has been one of the primary beneficiaries of the artificial intelligence boom, due to its relationship with Nvidia. Sales last fiscal year more than doubled to $15 billion.
On Monday, Super Micro announced that it was selling products featuring Nvidia’s next-generation AI chip called Blackwell. The company competes with vendors like Dell and Hewlett Packard Enterprise in packaging up Nvidia AI chips for other companies to access.
Super Micro was added to the S&P 500 in March, reflecting its rapidly growing business and then-soaring stock price. Less than two weeks after the index changes were announced, Super Micro reached its closing high of $118.81.
The troubles began within months. In August, Super Micro said it wouldn’t file its annual report with the SEC on time. Noted short seller Hindenburg Research then disclosed a short position in the company, and said in a report that it identified “fresh evidence of accounting manipulation.” The Wall Street Journal later reported that the Department of Justice was at the early stages of a probe into the company.
The month after announcing its report delay, Super Micro said it had received a notification from the Nasdaq, indicating that the delay in the filing of its annual report meant the company wasn’t in compliance with the exchange’s listing rules. Super Micro said the Nasdaq’s rules allowed the company 60 days to file its report or submit a plan to regain compliance. Based on that timeframe, the deadline was Monday.
WATCH: Super Micro is a sell due to accounting irregularities
Kelly Steckelberg attends an Evening from the Heart LA 2022 Gala hosted by the John Ritter Foundation for Aortic Health at Valley Relics Museum in Van Nuys, California, on May 5, 2022.
Araya Doheny | Getty Images
Canva, a high-valued design software startup that competes with Adobe, said Monday that it hired Kelly Steckelberg as its chief financial officer, five years after she helped take Zoom public and then guided the company through its Covid-19 pandemic surge.
Founded in 2013, Canva was valued recently at $32 billion, a drop from its peak of $40 billion in 2021.
“Kelly’s impressive track record as a strong leader and strategic thinker, combined with her proven expertise in scaling enterprise companies, make her the perfect addition to our leadership bench,” Canva said in an emailed statement.
Canva is generating about $2.5 billion in annualized revenue and boasts 220 million monthly users. The company is widely viewed as a top initial public offering candidate for venture-backed tech companies after a historically slow period for new offerings dating back to early 2022.
On Monday, ServiceTitan, which sells software for the trades, filed to list on the Nasdaq. Cerebras, a maker of artificial intelligence chips, has been on file since late September, and online lender Klarna said last week that it has confidentially filed its IPO paperwork with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
A Canva spokesperson declined to comment on the startup’s timeline for an IPO.
Steckelberg held financial positions at Cisco and was CEO of online dating company Zoosk before joining Zoom in 2017. Steckelberg is based in Austin, Texas, while Canva has its headquarters in Sydney, Australia.
Zoom went public with Steckelberg’s help in 2019. The video-chat company saw its market cap soar to upward of $160 billion in October 2020, early in the Covid-19 pandemic, as users working from home swarmed to the app. Zoom has since lost more than 85% of its value.
Steckelberg announced her departure from Zoom in August after seven years at the company. Last month, former Microsoft executive Michelle Chang replaced Steckelberg as Zoom’s CFO.
Canva’s previous finance chief Damien Singh resigned in February after the company said it was conducting an internal investigation surrounding inappropriate behavior.
ServiceTitan offices in Draper, Utah.
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ServiceTitan, a company that sells software to contractors such as plumbers and roofers, on Monday filed to go public on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol “TTAN.”
The filing suggests that investors could be getting more interested in next-generation software companies. Just a few, including Reddit and Rubrik, debuted on public markets in the U.S. this year, and chipmaker Cerebras filed for an initial public offering. There were basically no tech initial public offerings in 2021 or 2022 as central bankers pushed up interest rates to flight inflation, making investors less willing to bet on money-losing challengers.
Based in Glendale, California, ServiceTitan offers cloud software for advertising, scheduling jobs, dispatching, producing invoices and taking payments. It had a $35.7 million net loss on $193 million in revenue in the quarter that ended on July 31, according to the filing. Revenue was up about 24% year over year, and the quarterly loss had narrowed from almost $52 million.
ServiceTitan’s revenue growth rate will stand out for people investing in cloud stocks, who have seen rates sag with few new public companies in the sector. The average growth rate for Bessemer’s Nasdaq Emerging Cloud Index, the basis for the WisdomTree Cloud Computing Fund, is 16.6%.
The company was originally founded in 2007 by Ara Mahdessian and Vahe Kuzoyan, whose fathers were both residential contractors. While most ServiceTitan customers are small and medium-sized businesses, it has started focusing more on selling products to big companies and construction customers, according to the filing.
ServiceTitan plans to keep up to 5% of shares in the IPO for eligible clients, the founders’ friends and family members and others through a directed share program.
Investors include Battery Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners, Iconiq and TPG. Iconiq on its own controlled 24% of the compan’s Class A shares.
Competitors include Salesforce and SAP, along with specialty companies such as HouseCall Pro, Jobber and Workwave.
Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo and Citigroup are among the company’s IPO underwriters.
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