Bitcoin ($BTC) could retest its all-time high of $126,000 before year-end, Standard Chartered analyst Geoff Kendrick told clients this week after the coin rallied 23% to trade at $77,300 on Aug. 21. The case for that target is real; so is its limitation. Standard Chartered has not formally replaced Kendrick's $100,000 year-end call, and the analyst himself frames $126,000 as a level Bitcoin may revisit only if the current recovery gathers further momentum.
What moved the price
The rally's immediate mechanism was forced buying. According to Kendrick, short liquidations drove the move, meaning sellers covering losing positions generated mechanical demand with no shift in underlying conviction. That is worth naming plainly. A short squeeze is a supply removal event. It can move price sharply and fast, as this one did, carrying Bitcoin from a June low of $58,000 back near $80,000 in a matter of days. Kendrick also points to inflows into U.S. spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds as a potential second tailwind, framing ETF demand as something that could sustain the move rather than merely start it. Bitcoin spent months stuck between $60,000 and $65,000; Kendrick says it now looks firmly clear of that range.
The counterargument
Short liquidations are one-time events. Once the shorts are cleared, the mechanical buying stops. Kendrick's $126,000 level is conditional framing, not a revised target. "For the first time this year there is now a risk my end year forecast of USD100k is too low," he wrote. That sentence acknowledges upside risk; it does not retire the old number. The analyst also anchors potential acceleration to Oct. 6, the anniversary date of last year's record high. That reads more as a calendar narrative than a structural catalyst. Bitcoin fell 54% peak-to-trough during what Kendrick calls a "crypto winter," and a squeeze does not by itself reverse the conditions that produced the drawdown.
On balance, the Standard Chartered note resets the ceiling of what Kendrick is willing to say in writing. The line to watch is whether ETF inflows become the actual driver of the next leg up. Forced buying from shorts clears the path; it does not build the road. Bitcoin at $126,000 requires buyers who are not covering a trade they already lost.