Standard Chartered: Crypto Winter Over, Three of Four Metrics Agree

Geoffrey Kendrick, Standard Chartered's Global Head of Digital Assets Research, said the crypto winter is behind us. He put the cycle low at $59,000, the level Bitcoin touched on June 5.

Kendrick built the call on four on-chain metrics. Three of them point to a recovery. The fourth, stablecoin supply, is still contracting – a lag he said is normal at this stage of a cycle.

The first signal is Bitcoin dominance. It has climbed from 38% to 49% since November. Capital is rotating out of altcoins into the largest asset, a pattern that typically precedes a broader rally, Kendrick said.

Hash rate hit an all-time high in June, even as the price fell. Miners are adding capacity, which Kendrick reads as confidence that the worst of the selloff is over.

The MVRV Z-score, a ratio of market value to realized value, sits near levels that marked previous cycle bottoms in 2015, 2018, and 2022. The metric suggests Bitcoin is undervalued relative to its on-chain cost basis.

Stablecoin supply is the one metric that does not yet confirm a bottom. It is still shrinking, which normally signals that new money is not entering the system. Kendrick said that tends to lag price recoveries by several weeks. The other three signals are strong enough to override it, in his view.

Kendrick's framework is a structural call, not a price target. The conditions that defined the bear market – falling dominance, falling hash rate, extreme overvaluation, shrinking stablecoin supply – have mostly reversed. He expects the stablecoin metric to flip in the coming weeks.

The stance puts Standard Chartered at odds with other bank research desks. Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan have warned that regulatory uncertainty and a lack of clear catalysts could keep prices range-bound through the third quarter. Kendrick's counter is that the on-chain data is already telling a different story.

What would break the thesis? A drop below $59,000 would invalidate the cycle-low claim. A continued contraction in stablecoin supply past August would weaken the recovery narrative. A sustained decline in hash rate would signal miner capitulation, not expansion.

None of those have happened yet. The low from June 5 still holds.