Standard Chartered still sees bitcoin hitting $500,000 despite recent selloff

Standard Chartered's bullish crypto analyst still sees bitcoin's price hitting $500,000 during Donald Trump's presidency — even after a selloff that sank the world's largest digital currency to a three-month low.

Geoffrey Kendrick, who heads up digital assets research at Standard Chartered, told CNBC he believes bitcoin will hit the $200,000 mark this year before climbing even further in the coming years.

"Within the crypto ecosystem, what we need are traditional financial players, like Standard Chartered, like BlackRock and others that have the ETFs now to really step in," Kendrick said in an interview with CNBC's "Squawk Box Europe" Thursday.

"As the industry becomes more institutionalized, it should be safer," Kendrick said, adding that this should result in fewer negative headlines — such as the recent $1.5 billion hack on cryptocurrency exchange Bybit last week.

This increase in crypto adoption by institutions, coupled with some "regulatory clarity" in the U.S., should lead to less volatility over time, he added.

"That should add to that medium term, top-side potential, which for me is bitcoin up to $200,000 this year, and $500,000 before Trump leaves office," Kendrick told CNBC.

Kendrick said the catalyst necessary for large financial institutions to gain confidence to invest in bitcoin and other crypto assets is a stabilization in prices and increased regulatory clarity.

Bitcoin earlier this week sank to a three-month low below $90,000 amid declines in global equity markets. As of Thursday, the token was trading at $86,418. That means it's down about 20% from an all-time high of $108,786, which the coin peaked at in January, according to CoinGecko data.

Standard Chartered's Kendrick said digital currencies have dropped more broadly due to uncertainty around tariffs and resolutions to major wars such as Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Gaza.