Standard Chartered Holds $100K Bitcoin Target, Calls Strategy's Preferred Stock Slide a Communication Challenge
Standard Chartered kept its year-end Bitcoin price target at $100,000 on July 10, 2026, as the bank's global digital assets research head, Geoffrey Kendrick, characterised the selloff around Strategy's preferred stock instrument as a communication challenge rather than a sign of structural insolvency.
Bitcoin was trading between $62,800 and $63,300 in early July, roughly half its all-time high of approximately $126,000 reached in October 2025. Despite that drawdown, Standard Chartered described current prices as a buying opportunity. "When we look back at the end of 2026 with bitcoin at $100k we will say this was the buying zone we all wanted," Kendrick said, according to reporting by Bloomberg and Bloomingbit.
What Happened at Strategy
Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy) holds 843,775 BTC, accounting for more than 4% of Bitcoin's fixed 21 million supply. The company built its reputation on an explicit "never sell" policy, but that position shifted when it launched STRC (Variable Rate Series A Perpetual Stretch Preferred Stock) in July 2025. STRC is a perpetual preferred stock instrument (a hybrid security that pays regular dividends but has no fixed maturity date) carrying a 12% annual dividend.
The product was designed to raise fresh capital by monetizing Bitcoin's appreciation without directly liquidating BTC holdings.
On June 5, Bitcoin crashed below $60,000 for the first time since October 2024, setting off a cascade that exposed a structural vulnerability in STRC's design. When STRC trades below $95, Strategy is contractually required to increase its dividend rate by 0.5% across all outstanding shares, adding an estimated $53 million per year in costs per trigger. With roughly $10 billion in STRC outstanding, declining Bitcoin prices create a compounding cost spiral. Adding competitive pressure, Strive Asset Management had launched a rival preferred stock instrument, SATA, in May 2026 at a 13% yield, making it harder for STRC to hold its $100 par value even before the June price shock. STRC fell sharply over June: it posted an intraday low of $83 and closed at $88.59 on June 18, before declining further to an intraday low of $71.25 in late June. By early July it had recovered to approximately $90.
Strategy's common stock, MSTR, has dropped approximately 80% from its November 2024 peak near $560.
On June 1, Strategy sold 32 BTC, its first Bitcoin sale since 2022. That small transaction nonetheless triggered a 5.9% drop in MSTR and pushed Bitcoin briefly to $71,286, signalling a structural shift in the company's posture. Between July 1 and 5, Strategy sold 3,588 BTC (approximately $216 million) to replenish its cash reserves and cover dividend obligations. This was its largest Bitcoin liquidation since 2022, following the smaller June 1 transaction that had already broken the company's longstanding no-sell streak.
Over the same week, the company also bought 3,657 BTC at an average price of $64,534, resulting in a net gain of just 69 BTC despite deploying approximately $20 million in net capital. That implies an effective cost of more than $289,000 per net BTC acquired, a figure that starkly illustrates how the structure had turned against the company.
Standard Chartered's Read
Kendrick's position is that Strategy's Bitcoin holdings are more than sufficient to service its obligations. The cash reserve picture, however, has shifted materially. Prior to May 15, 2026, Strategy held approximately $2.55 billion in USD reserves, a figure some analysts had cited as providing roughly 17.4 months of dividend coverage. Strategy's repurchase of $1.5 billion in convertible notes on May 15 reduced those reserves to approximately $871 million, equivalent to roughly 6 months of coverage and well below the company's originally planned 24 months. Analysts and publications working from the pre-buyback figure may be overstating the current cushion.
"I see what is happening at MSTR right now as a communication challenge, nothing more," Kendrick said. His argument is that Strategy failed to clearly signal its shift from pure Bitcoin accumulation to a yield-generating, Bitcoin-backed capital model, and that markets punished the ambiguity rather than any real solvency risk.
Standard Chartered had previously forecast Bitcoin at $300,000 by end-2026, then revised that to $150,000 in February 2026, and has since revised it further to $100,000, marking a series of substantial downward adjustments from its original projection.
The bank's longer-range projections remain aggressive, with BTC at $500,000 and Ethereum at $40,000 by 2030.
On-Chain Data Supports the Supply Case
Regardless of how the Strategy situation resolves, on-chain data offers some structural context for the $100,000 thesis. Long-term holders now control 16.64 million BTC, a record representing about 83% of circulating supply. Bitcoin exchange reserves have fallen to approximately 2.21 million BTC, near multi-year lows. Both figures point to reduced selling pressure from long-committed holders, even as short-term sentiment weakens. Bitcoin ETFs saw $4.5 billion in net outflows during June 2026, the worst month on record for the product category.
Regional Relevance: Africa and South Asia
Standard Chartered is not a marginal voice in emerging markets. The bank operates custody, trading, stablecoin infrastructure, and tokenized deposit services across Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. A bullish call from its research desk carries institutional weight in Lagos, Nairobi, Karachi, and Dhaka in ways it might not on Wall Street. That influence comes with a layer of complexity: in a separate report, Standard Chartered has warned that stablecoin adoption could drain up to $1 trillion from emerging-market bank deposits over three years, naming Pakistan, Bangladesh, Egypt, and Sri Lanka among the most exposed countries. The bank's simultaneous bullish Bitcoin position and deposit-outflow warning point in different directions, and both carry weight in the same markets.
In these regions, Bitcoin primarily functions as an inflation hedge, a remittance tool, and a savings instrument rather than a speculative trade. India ranks first in the Chainalysis Global Crypto Adoption Index, Pakistan ranks third, and four Sub-Saharan African countries now appear in the global top 20. Nigeria's Lightning Network remittance corridors and Kenya's BitPesa platform (serving 6.5 million users) reflect genuine utility demand that does not disappear with price volatility.
The STRC episode carries a separate warning for institutions in these markets considering similar corporate treasury structures. The feedback loop between declining asset prices and rising dividend costs pushed Strategy into precisely the Bitcoin liquidations its structure was designed to avoid. Regional institutions in Nigeria, South Africa, and India, where discussions about BTC-backed yield products are underway, should treat this as a live case study in structural risk.
What to Watch
Citi cut its 12-month Bitcoin forecast to $82,000, citing weakening ETF demand and slowing institutional adoption. The $4.5 billion in ETF outflows recorded in June lends direct support to that reasoning.
That puts two major banks on opposite ends of the near-term outlook. Whether Standard Chartered's $100,000 target proves accurate will depend heavily on whether institutional demand recovers through the second half of 2026, and on whether Strategy can stabilize STRC without further large-scale Bitcoin sales.