Has Bitcoin hit bottom? Standard Chartered's answer is yes! Galaxy throws cold water: it's only the "real bottom" when it drops to 40,000.

The Bitcoin market is currently witnessing a rare "bull vs bear" battle between analysts. Faced with the harsh reality of a cumulative decline of over 50% since Bitcoin's all-time high of about $126,000 in October 2025, two top Financial Institutions, Inc. have come to completely opposite conclusions. Geoffrey Kendrick, the head of digital asset research at Standard Chartered Bank, believes that around $59,000 could be the bottom of this cycle; while Galaxy Digital released a report on the same day stating that only 4 of the bottom signals have been triggered, and the basic bottom should be in the range of $40,000 to $46,000, with a deeper decline possibly pushing Bitcoin down to $30,000 to $37,000. Standard Chartered Bank's reversal of bearish prediction: Constructing a bullish logic with a three-layer narrative Kendrick believes that Bitcoin has successfully bottomed out around $59,000, a bullish forecast that is in stark contrast to his outlook in February, when he predicted Bitcoin could fall to $50,000 before rebounding to $100,000 by the end of 2026. The first layer: GEO Group Inc and macro pressures eased as US-Iran "historic peace" is a relief for risk assets Kendrick believes that the most direct catalyst for the bottom comes from GEO Group Inc politics. With news of the US and Iran nearing a breakthrough agreement aimed at reopening the Strait of Hormuz, international oil prices have plummeted, global stocks have surged, and the macro hedging pressure on technology stocks and crypto assets has significantly eased. Kendrick believes that the drop in oil prices and the easing of pressure on US Treasury yields will directly improve the macro allocation environment for crypto assets, while significantly weakening the core GEO Group Inc variable that previously supported risk aversion sentiment. The second layer: Critical point of fund rotation - SpaceX IPO fund rotation is coming to an end Kendrick's second key logic is worth further investigation. He points out that the significant amount of subscription funds reserved by retail investors for the SpaceX IPO is nearly in place, which means that the selling actions of bloodletting from the crypto market to participate in the IPO may have entered the final stage. With SpaceX officially listing on the Nasdaq at a price of $135 per share, raising $75 billion, this portion of retail investor funds will transition from "net outflow from crypto" to the phase of "waiting for IPO returns." Kendrick expects that once SpaceX goes public, profits from successful investors are likely to gradually flow back into risk assets, including Bitcoin, forming new buying support. According to reports, the spot Bitcoin ETF has seen a net outflow of about $1.55 billion since mid-May. The pace of this change in fund flow coincides with the SpaceX IPO roadshow and subscription period - the intense roadshow and subscription period for SpaceX in early June 2026 happened to be the most intense time window for ETF fund outflows. What's more critical is that on-chain data does not show significant signs of abnormal cashing out, and ETF fund outflows and retail selling are more about reallocation rather than a complete exit - this means that funds have not fled the market, but are simply rotating between different assets. The third layer: The signal gun of Strategy has fired - classic bottom signal of selling 32 and buying 1,550 The third key pillar of Kendrick's bullish narrative comes from Strategy (MSTR.US), the world's largest corporate Bitcoin holder. In late May, Strategy sold 32 Bitcoins for approximately $2.5 million to pay for STRC perpetual preferred stock dividends. This transaction accounted for only 0.0038% of its holdings at the time, but it triggered a strong reaction in the market - the company's record of "only buying and not selling" for four consecutive years was broken, leading to a 6% drop in MSTR's stock price and Bitcoin falling below $72,000 within hours. However, just as fear spread in the market, Strategy bought 1,550 Bitcoins for approximately $101 million on June 8, with an average purchase price of around $65,332, which was about 15% lower than the average selling price of $77,135 a week ago. Kendrick had predicted this scenario before the incident - he believed that Strategy's "small sell first, then buy big" pattern was completely consistent with the experience at the end of 2022, when Strategy quickly made larger purchases after similar-sized sales. He estimates that the scale of this repurchase could reach 10 times or even 100 times the previous sales volume, while the actual repurchase multiplier is about 48 times. In a client report, Kendrick explicitly wrote, "When we look back at the end of 2026, we will say that this is the buying range we have all been waiting for." He maintains his target prices for Bitcoin at $100,000 by the end of the year and Ethereum at $4,000, and advises investors to gradually build positions rather than attempting to time the bottom perfectly. Galaxy Digital pours cold water: The bear market "surrender-style selling" has not arrived yet, with the basic bottom at $40,000 Only 4 out of 13 bottom indicators have been triggered: Without despair, where is the reversal Galaxy Digital's bearish logic is not simply emotional pessimism, but is based on a systematic bottom confirmation framework. The company tracks 13 key historical bottom indicators, from on-chain data to market sentiment and fund flows, covering the bottom identification experience of multiple cycles. However, their current conclusion is alarming - only 4 out of the 13 indicators have been triggered, meaning that the market has not yet reached the historical reversal threshold where the majority of bottom conditions are met. Galaxy Digital's head of research pointed out in the report that typical cyclical bottoms are often accompanied by market "capitulation" - investors selling their positions in desperation regardless of cost, large-scale actual loss transfers on-chain, a sharp decrease in exchange inflows after a surge, the percentage of unrealized loss chips reaching abnormally high levels, and panic spreading throughout the market followed by a slow return of bottom-fishing demand. But the current market has not shown these signals. Data from CryptoQuant and Glassnode shows that although the number of BTC in an unrealized loss state briefly rose to about 10.5 million in early June, exceeding the number of profitable chips for the first time, the total realized losses by investors in the past 30 days have only been $18.7 billion, indicating that the market is still in a slow bleeding state. Without the "blood flowing" moment of despair, there is no opportunity for a reversal at the bottom of the cycle. Galaxy's predicted basic bottom: $40,000 to $46,000 Based on the assessment that there is a lack of surrender-style selling and that institutional deleveraging is still in the middle stage, Galaxy provides two clear levels of bottom estimates. In the baseline scenario, the basic bottom for Bitcoin is estimated to be between $40,000 and $46,000, with a time window from now until the fourth quarter of 2026. In a worse scenario - if ETF outflows accelerate, the macro environment deteriorates further, and regulatory authorities signal additional pressure - a deeper decline could push Bitcoin to the range of $30,000 to $37,000. The range of $40,000 to $46,000 means there is still about 27% to 37% downward potential from the current price level of around $63,000 to $64,000. If this decline materializes, it will be the most serious liquidity squeeze that Bitcoin has faced since 2024.