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Bitcoin ice carving
A large bitcoin ice carving (Kirsty O'Connor/Getty Images)

Standard Chartered: Bitcoin’s dip below $100,000 is “inevitable”

Participants in prediction markets are also betting that bitcoin will dip below $100,000 this year.

Yaël Bizouati-Kennedy

bitcoin is still struggling to rebound noticeably and is hovering around $108,000 Wednesday morning, a 14% drop from its October 6 all-time high.

Geoff Kendrick, global head of digital assets research at Standard Chartered, said that the drop below $100,000 is “inevitable,” but also said it will be “short-lived.”

“Stay nimble and ready to buy the dip below 100k if it comes. It may be the last time bitcoin is EVER below 100k,” he wrote in a Wednesday note, adding, “The question now is how far does bitcoin need to fall before finding a base?”

According to him, several factors are worth keeping an eye on, including gold vs. bitcoin flows and liquidity measures.

Yesterday’s sharp gold selloff coincided with a strong intra-day bounce in bitcoin. Gold has been outperforming bitcoin a lot recently... something which has perhaps started to turn,” he wrote.

Finally, technical metrics are also of note, as the “50 week moving average in bitcoin has held since early 2023 (when bitcoin was 25k and I forecast it to reach 100k by end-2024),” he wrote.

Nonetheless, Kendrick told Sherwood News that he remains “very bullish long term... I’m forecasting 200k year-end 2025 and 500k end 2028.”

Meanwhile, market-implied probabilities derived from event contracts offered on Robinhood show that traders believe there’s a 66% chance bitcoin drops below $100,000 this year. Traders are pricing a 33% chance of a further drop below $90,000 in the predictions market.

(Robinhood Markets Inc. is the parent company of Sherwood Media, an independently operated media company subject to certain legal and regulatory restrictions.)

Nic Puckrin, cofounder of Coin Bureau, noted that bitcoin funding rates are trending into negative territory, while open interest is on the rise again.

“This suggests that traders are mostly opening short positions, and the 24-hour long/short ratio confirms this,” he said.

Puckrin said that the spark could come from the reopening of the US government or a softening of the US-China trade war. Failing that, next week’s Federal Reserve meeting is likely to bring another rate cut.

“At this point, there is more potential for good news than bad. This is precisely why traders should think twice before opening leveraged shorts right now. When everyone bets against the recovery, that’s often when it happens, and the reversal will likely be swift,” he said.

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Ethereum treasury firm ETHZilla acquires two aircraft engines (!?!?) in tokenization push

ETHZilla, known for its ethereum treasury, formed a new subsidiary and purchased aerospace equipment in a bid to boost the company’s tokenization efforts. 

The treasury firm, through its nascent subsidiary ETHZilla Aerospace LLC, “acquired two CFM56-7B24 aircraft engines, together with all parts, engine records and engine stands” for $12.2 million from Avean Engine Solutions, according to an 8K filing on Friday with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. 

The two aircraft engines are subject to lease agreements with a major airline, which were assigned to ETHZilla as part of the acquisition, the filing stated.

The firm’s top priority in 2026 is growing its real-world asset tokenization business and is keen on rolling out RWA tokens in the first quarter, an ETHZilla representative told Sherwood News at the beginning of the year. 

ETHZilla’s acquisition of two aircraft engines is part of this tokenization road map, which aims to bring real-world assets from high-value vertical markets, such as aerospace, maritime, and heavy equipment, on-chain. 

“In the heavy equipment market, we will initially focus on aerospace assets such as aircraft engines and airframes to tokenize,” ETHZilla Chairman and CEO McAndrew Rudisill said in his shareholder letter from December. “This represents a large, growing market with quality high-yielding assets, and we believe it is a very attractive space for tokenization.” 

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XRP spot ETFs on pace to record first-ever weekly outflow

Spot XRP ETFs are on track to notch a weekly outflow for the first time since their inception in November 2025. The week’s flows turned negative on Tuesday when the investment vehicles saw over $53 million leave the funds.

Prior to this week, spot XRP ETFs had averaged $127.5 million in weekly inflows, a figure lifted by the fund’s first day of trading, which had $243 million worth of inflows, according to SoSoValue.

The funds’ ongoing pace comes as XRP has shed nearly 20% from its 2026 high of $2.39 to trade at a lower price than when the ETFs launched. 

XRP is in “Extreme Fear” territory, per social data from blockchain analytics firm Santiment. “Small retail traders have become pessimistic toward the #5 market cap cryptocurrency after a -19% drop since the high back on January 5th,” Santiment wrote. The firm told Sherwood News, “If we reach levels of bearishness that we were seeing back on November 20-21, 2025, it would be an indication that a major bounce is likely.”

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Ethereum gives up its 2026 gains

As the overall market goes risk-off amid geopolitical tensions, ethereum has decreased 7% in the last 24 hours and is basically flat for 2026.

The cryptocurrency is hovering just below $3,000, a more than 10% pullback from this year’s high of around $3,350. The recent drawdown is the sharpest in the last 24 hours among its peers. Over the same period, bitcoin is down 3.6%, XRP dipped 5.2%, solana slumped 5.6%, and dogecoin tumbled 4%. 

Meanwhile, leading ethereum treasury firm BitMine Immersion Technologies, which recently announced a $200 million investment into Beast Industries, acquired an additional 35,268 ethereum tokens worth $108 million last week, bringing its total to 4.2 million tokens worth nearly $12.7 billion at current prices. 

The firm also allocated 581,920 tokens for staking, ethereum’s security mechanism. Participation has been on the rise, and the entry queue to start staking is multiple times longer than the exit line.

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Sherwood Media, LLC produces fresh and unique perspectives on topical financial news and is a fully owned subsidiary of Robinhood Markets, Inc., and any views expressed here do not necessarily reflect the views of any other Robinhood affiliate, including Robinhood Markets, Inc., Robinhood Financial LLC, Robinhood Securities, LLC, Robinhood Crypto, LLC, or Robinhood Money, LLC.