Normal Chartered has sharply decreased its famously bullish Bitcoin roadmap, slicing its 2026 value goal in half and acknowledging that its earlier near-term projections had been too aggressive, even because it retains an ultra-optimistic long-term view intact.
Normal Chartered Downgrades Bitcoin Value Predictions
In a notice shared on X by VanEck head of analysis Matthew Sigel, Normal Chartered argues that Bitcoin’s conventional halving cycle has been overtaken by ETF-driven flows. The financial institution writes: “With the arrival of ETF shopping for, we expect the BTC halving cycle is not a related value driver. The logic in earlier cycles (when US ETFs didn’t exist) – i.e., costs would peak about 18 months after every halving and decline thereafter – is not legitimate, in our view.”
The report provides that it’s going to “take a break of the present all-time excessive ($ 126,000 on 6 October 2025) to show that; we count on this to occur in H1-2026.”
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Alongside that shift in framework, the financial institution re-profiled its multi-year Bitcoin targets. In response to the figures shared by Sigel, Normal Chartered has lowered its 2025 forecast from $200,000 to $100,000, its 2026 goal from $300,000 to $150,000, its 2027 projection from $400,000 to $225,000, its 2028 estimate from $500,000 to $300,000, and its 2029 prediction from $500,000 to $400,000 whereas maintaining a $500,000 goal for 2030.
Geoff Kendrick, Normal Chartered’s head of digital belongings analysis, characterises the current drawdown as painful however not structural. He describes the present part as “a chilly breeze,” explicitly rejecting the notion of a brand new crypto winter and noting that the magnitude of the pullback stays per corrections seen in previous bull cycles.
On the similar time, he factors out that weaker valuations for listed Bitcoin treasury firms have curtailed their capacity to behave as main marginal consumers, leaving spot ETFs as the first driver of near-term beneficial properties.
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Wall Avenue Large Bernstein Agrees
The downgrade additionally lands within the context of a broader rethink on Wall Avenue. Sooner or later earlier, on December 8, Sigel shared a separate notice from Bernstein that reached an analogous conclusion about Bitcoin’s market construction.
Bernstein wrote that “the Bitcoin cycle has damaged the 4-year sample (cycle peaking each 4 years) and is now in an elongated bull-cycle with extra sticky institutional shopping for offsetting any retail panic promoting.”
Regardless of an roughly 30% correction, the agency notes that “we’ve got seen lower than 5% outflows by way of ETFs.” On that foundation, Bernstein now strikes its 2026 Bitcoin value goal to $150,000, sees the cycle “doubtlessly peaking in 2027E at $200,000,” and retains its long-term 2033 goal at roughly $1,000,000 per BTC.
Each Normal Chartered and Bernstein are converging on the identical structural message: the halving alone not explains Bitcoin’s trajectory. ETF flows, institutional positioning and balance-sheet dynamics at the moment are the core variables, even when their exact value targets and timelines diverge.
At press time, Bitcoin traded at $92,686.
Featured picture created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com
