A drumbeat of bearish signals is building across the crypto industry , with Standard Chartered slashing its Bitcoin price target and Coinbase Global Inc. getting cut to sell as momentum traders struggle to push Bitcoin back toward its highs.

Standard Chartered lowered its year-end 2026 Bitcoin forecast to US$100,000 from US$150,000 — and from US$300,000 just months earlier — warning the cryptocurrency could drop to US$50,000 before stabilizing. The bank pointed to weakening price momentum and a tougher macro backdrop while the token tumbled again Thursday, dropping as much as four per cent to US$65,079.

“Bitcoin had a horrible year, and why do I think it happened?” Michael Novogratz, head of Galaxy Digital, said Thursday during a conference in New York. “I think we crossed US$100,000. As you had

the ETFs and the DATs coming in to buy Bitcoin, they were met with sellers. And once the buying stopped, it doesn’t take a lot of buying to push it back the other direction.”

At the same time, Monness, Crespi, Hardt & Co. downgraded Coinbase to sell, calling assumptions of a steady recovery “foolish + facile” given the typical length of crypto bear markets. The brokerage cut its price target by 68 per cent to a street-low US$120 and lowered revenue and earnings estimates through 2027. Coinbase fell for a third day, and was  down about eight per cent to US$140.

Bitcoin has fallen more than 45 per cent from its October peak near just over US$126,000 and has repeatedly failed to sustain rebounds, a sign that speculative demand is thinning. The broader crypto market has shed nearly US$2 trillion in value over the same stretch.

The Monness Crespi downgrade follows at least five other price target cuts in February by Wall Street analysts of the

largest United States crypto exchange , which has seen its shares tumble almost 40 per cent this year.

Coinbase, which will release fourth-quarter results after the close of equity trading, published a company-compiled list of consensus financial performance estimates earlier Thursday.  Analysts surveyed by Bloomberg expect Coinbase to report fourth-quarter earnings of 86 cents per share, an over 80 per cent year-over-year decline, but Coinbase’s own set of analyst consensus predicts even worse results, a loss of five cents per share.

On Thursday, Coinbase said customers may be unable to buy, sell, transfer on its website, and its team is investigating the issue. “Your funds are safe,” the company said in a post on social network X. A Coinbase representative pointed to the post when asked for comment on the outage.

The synchronized downgrades highlight a shift in tone across

crypto’s institutional ecosystem . Last year’s rebound narrative hinged on renewed risk appetite and breakout momentum. Instead, rallies have stalled, buyers have hesitated and analysts are dialing back expectations.

“This selloff has been less extreme than previous ones and has not seen the collapse of any digital asset platforms,” Standard Chartered’s Geoffrey Kendrick wrote. That may signal a maturing market — but one where fading momentum, rather than fresh inflows, now sets the tone.

One modicum of solace: analysts at JPMorgan Chase & Co. argue that the retail cohort has largely “ignored” the recent crypto selloff. The group’s net positioning in IBIT, the largest spot-Bitcoin ETF, has remained roughly flat since mid-January, they wrote in a note Thursday.

—With assistance from Sidhartha Shukla, Melos Ambaye and Olga Kharif.

  • White House summons Coinbase, banks to hash out crypto bill
  • Crypto traders flee to prediction bets after US$150 billion crash