XRP $8 Prediction: Why Standard Chartered Cut It to $2.80
Standard Chartered's $8 XRP call for 2026 was cut to $2.80 in February. What the bank, Tom Lee and Grok actually said, and what each target still needs.
Key takeaways
- Standard Chartered cut its end-2026 XRP target from $8 to $2.80 in February, less than two months into the year. The video says many holders never heard about the cut.
- According to the video, the $10 XRP figure credited to Elon Musk's AI came from Grok editing a chart image, and Grok later called it a fun hypothetical.
- Tom Lee's $250,000 Bitcoin call came with an 'if' about breaking the four-year cycle, and he lowered it to $150,000 to $200,000 by May.
- The video says the big 2026 calls leaned on rate cuts, the Clarity Act and ETF inflows, and that none of them played out as expected.
- For any price target, the video suggests asking what number you are holding for, where it came from, and what your plan is if it never arrives.
Standard Chartered cut its $8 XRP target for the end of 2026 to $2.80 in February 2026, yet many holders kept waiting for $8 all year, according to a Bullrunners video. With XRP at about $1.25 and two months left, the video revisits the biggest 2026 calls for XRP and Bitcoin to see what was said and what changed.
This matters if you made real decisions based on those numbers, such as buying more, skipping profit-taking or holding through drops. The video’s answer is that analysts didn’t lie. Instead, the headline numbers travelled much further than the conditions and corrections attached to them.
Where do XRP and Bitcoin stand against the 2026 targets?
At the time of recording, XRP was at about $1.25 and Bitcoin was around $78,000, with roughly two months left in 2026. According to the video, XRP started the year at about $1.84, so a holder who bought on January 1 is down about a third.
The video gives an example. 1,000 XRP is worth about $1,250 today. At $8 it would be worth about $8,000.
Bitcoin started 2026 at about $87,600. Earlier in the year it fell below $60,000, more than half below its record of about $126,000.
What did Standard Chartered predict for Bitcoin?
According to the video, Standard Chartered first had Bitcoin at $300,000 for 2026, then cut that to $150,000 in December 2025, before the year had even started. The video says that when he made that cut, Geoffrey Kendrick, the bank’s Global Head of Digital Assets Research, said: “We think crypto winters are a thing of the past.” A crypto winter is a long stretch when prices fall and stay down.
Bitcoin then dropped below $60,000. By June, Kendrick was writing: “Winter is over. Welcome back to crypto spring.” The video points to the contrast. In December, winters were described as a thing of the past. By June, one had just ended.
What did Tom Lee actually say about $250,000 Bitcoin?
Tom Lee, who runs the research firm Fundstrat, said Bitcoin could reach $250,000 by the end of 2026, and that headline spread widely in January. The video says it wasn’t his first time using the number. It says that in January 2025 he called for Bitcoin to reach as high as $250,000 by the end of 2025. Bitcoin finished 2025 at around $87,500.
The video plays a CNBC clip and highlights one word: “if.” Lee said that if Bitcoin reached $200,000 or $250,000 in 2026, it would be breaking the four-year cycle. That cycle is the historical pattern of a big run followed by a bad year roughly every four years. He also said that if the cycle held, Bitcoin should be down in 2026. He still expected a recovery, citing four reasons:
- a leverage reset on October 10
- institutional adoption
- Wall Street building products on blockchains
- US government support
So far, the video says, 2026 has followed the four-year cycle Lee described. By May, Lee had lowered his range to $150,000 to $200,000. Even the bottom of that range would need Bitcoin to nearly double by New Year’s Eve.
Where did the $8 and $10 XRP numbers come from?
The $8 XRP target came from Standard Chartered in April 2025. According to the video, the $10 figure came from an AI image edit. Because a bank of that size published $8, the video says, the number didn’t stay with the bank’s clients. It spread across crypto news, and many holders made it the number they were holding for.
The video describes the $10 call that circulated in January as weaker than it sounded. It says someone asked Grok, the AI built into X, to edit a picture of the XRP chart to show how high it could go, and Grok drew $10. When pressed, Grok called its own $10 a “fun hypothetical.” Someone then bet it $100 that XRP wouldn’t get there, and Grok took the bet. In the video’s words, $10 never came from anyone who studies XRP.
The video runs the math from about $1.25:
| Target | Move needed from about $1.25 | Source |
|---|---|---|
| $2.80 | More than double | Standard Chartered (revised, Feb 2026) |
| $8 | More than 6x | Standard Chartered (April 2025) |
| $10 | About 8x | Grok chart edit |
The video says that at $10, all XRP in circulation would be worth about $634 billion, around 40% of Bitcoin’s value. For a fuller look at testing a target this way, see the one test for any XRP price target.
Why did the 2026 targets fall apart?
According to the video, the 2026 targets assumed three things would go right, and all three went the other way. At the start of the year, the ETFs were open to anyone with a brokerage account, most people expected interest rates to fall, and the Clarity Act looked close.
- The Clarity Act stalled. The Clarity Act is the bill meant to give crypto clear US rules. On September 15 it needed 60 Senate votes to open debate and got 49, with 50 against. The video says seven Democratic senators want to keep talking, so it calls the bill not dead, though no new vote was on the calendar at the time of recording. The video also says crypto groups spent about $176 million on this year’s election. Speaking before the vote, it said no one knew yet whether that money could change a vote like this one. More detail is in whether the Clarity Act is dead after the 49-50 vote.
- Rates went up, not down. The Fed raised rates in September and held them on October 28. According to the video, two voters wanted another hike, and before that meeting traders put the odds of a December hike at 78%. The video explains that when savings accounts and government bonds pay more, money that might have gone into a volatile coin often goes somewhere safer. It adds that this doesn’t hold every time. Bullrunners covered this in how a 2026 rate hike compares with 2022 for XRP.
- ETF money didn’t arrive. The video says that by late August, more than $2 billion more had left US Bitcoin ETFs this year than had come in.
When did Standard Chartered cut its XRP target?
Standard Chartered cut its XRP target from $8 to $2.80 in a February note to clients, a drop of about 65%. That was months before the September Senate vote. As the video puts it, anyone holding through spring for $8 was waiting on a number the bank had already cut.
The bank lowered its other end-2026 targets at the same time. The XRP and Bitcoin figures below are widely reported. The Ethereum and Solana figures are as stated in the video.
| Asset | Old end-2026 target | Revised target (Feb 2026) |
|---|---|---|
| XRP | $8 | $2.80 |
| Bitcoin | $150,000 | $100,000 |
| Ethereum | $7,500 | $4,000 |
| Solana | $250 | $135 |
The bank cited money leaving the ETFs and lower appetite for risk. According to the video, Kendrick wrote that “recent price action for digital assets has been challenging to say the least.” The bank kept its $28 XRP target for 2030. The video notes that no one can check that number for another four years.
The video calls cutting a target normal. A bank builds a target from assumptions such as ETF inflows, and when those change, the target changes too. The cut was reported in crypto news, but the video says the $8 figure kept circulating anyway. As one holder quoted in the video put it, “targets move more than the price does.” The bank’s XRP number fell about 65%, while XRP itself fell about a third.
The video says the closest remaining target is the bank’s $100,000 for Bitcoin, which needs about a 29% rise from $78,000. It adds that Kendrick said in August that the figure might end up too low. The video also says XRP’s price still tends to move with Bitcoin.
Did analysts lie about 2026 price targets?
According to the video, no. It says it found no one saying something they knew to be false. The host’s view is that most of the big numbers are still far away and that the majority will turn out wrong. The video’s main criticism is about how the numbers reached holders. The headline figures spread everywhere, while the “ifs” and the downward revisions mostly didn’t.
The video argues that, as a result, people made real choices on stale or conditional numbers. Some bought more in January because an AI “predicted” $10. Some held all spring for $8 after the bank had already cut it. Some skipped taking profit because $250,000 Bitcoin was “coming.” As the host puts it, nobody calls holders to say a bank has cut its target. Many found out months later.
Questions to ask about any price target
The video ends with a short self-check for holders that works for any target you hear next year:
- What number are you holding for right now? The video notes it may no longer be $8. It may simply be your break-even price.
- Where did that number come from? In this story alone, the sources ranged from a bank’s client note to a conditional TV remark to an AI image edit.
- What is your plan if it never comes, or comes years later? The video suggests being ready for three cases: the target is reached, it isn’t, and something in between.
Bullrunners would add two checks of its own. First, has the source revised the number since you first heard it? Second, what did the number assume, such as rate cuts, new laws or fund inflows? For one way to write a plan down, see Bullrunners’ guide to a five-step XRP exit strategy.
What to watch before December 31
The video points to three markers for the rest of 2026:
- whether Bitcoin approaches Standard Chartered’s revised $100,000 target
- whether the Fed hikes again in December, as traders were expecting according to the video
- whether the Clarity Act gets a new Senate vote
When the next round of 2027 targets appears, check the date, the conditions behind the number and whether the source has already changed it.
Frequently asked questions
Did Standard Chartered predict $8 XRP for 2026?
Yes. Standard Chartered said in April 2025 that XRP would reach $8 by the end of 2026. In February 2026 the bank sent clients a note cutting that target to $2.80.
Did Elon Musk's AI predict $10 XRP?
Not in any researched sense, according to the video. It says a user asked Grok, the AI built into X, to edit an XRP chart image to show how high it could go, and Grok drew $10. Grok later called the figure a fun hypothetical.
What is Standard Chartered's long-term XRP target?
The bank kept a target of $28 for XRP by 2030, even while cutting its end-2026 numbers. That is a forecast, not a promise.
What would XRP need to reach $8 by the end of 2026?
With XRP at about $1.25 when the video was recorded, it would need to rise more than six times in about two months. Even the revised $2.80 target would need XRP to more than double.
Did analysts lie about 2026 crypto price targets?
The video says it found no one saying something they knew to be false. The problem it describes is that the big numbers spread widely while the conditions and later cuts mostly didn't.
Full video transcript
From the video's captions, lightly formatted. Captions can mishear names and numbers, so check figures against the article above.
$8 XRP by the end of 2026. That's a number a lot of holders have been waiting on. Some of you even saw an artificial intelligence say $10 XRP. And if you hold Bitcoin, you were told $250,000. [music] Now, at the time I'm recording this video, XRP is at about $1.25. Bitcoin is around $78,000 and there only 2 months left in the year.
That gap is wearing people down. I bought in 2022 because I believed in its long-term potential. I still do, but the hype and endless price prediction sometimes makes me wonder. And some holders have gone further. They're asking, "Did they lie to us?" So, we went back through the biggest calls for 2026.
We found what was really said, who [music] changed their number, and what each one still needs by December 31st. The $8 XRP prediction stings the most [music] because the bank behind it did something back in February most holders never heard about. And if you held all spring waiting for $8, you'll want to see it. So, did they really lie to you about 2026, or did you only hear half the story? Well, to answer that, we're starting with Bitcoin because its big numbers started falling apart first.
Let's [music] run it. All right, bull runners. Welcome back to the channel. Now, let's start with Standard Chartered. It's one of the biggest banks in the world, and it's the same bank behind the $8 XRP price target.
For this year, the bank had Bitcoin at $300,000. That's almost four times where Bitcoin is right now. Then, in December of 2025, the bank cut that number in half to 150K. So before 2026 even started, half of that number was already gone. And the man behind those numbers said something that aged badly.
Joffrey Kendrick runs digital asset research at the bank. And when he made that cut, he said, "We think crypto winters are a thing of the past." Now crypto winter is when prices fall and just stay down for a long time. Then Bitcoin kept falling all the way under $60,000. That's more than half gone from its record of $126k. And by June, Kendrick was writing, "Winter is over.
Welcome back to crypto spring." So, in December, winters were a thing of the past. By June, he was telling people one had just ended. But the biggest Bitcoin number of all came from Tom Lee. Tom Lee predicts Bitcoin could reach 250K by the end of 2026. And that headline was all over crypto in January.
He runs Fundstrat, a research firm big investors pay for. So, when he goes on CNBC, a lot of people listen. From where Bitcoin is, $250,000 means it has to more than triple in 2 months. And this wasn't the first time he'd said 250K. a year earlier in January of 2025. He said Bitcoin could reach as high as 250K by the end of 2025.
Now, Bitcoin finished that year at around $87,500. Then the same number came back for 2026. Now, listen what happened when it came up on CNBC. And listen for one small word.
As I said, you're getting right back on the horse. 250 $250,000.
Yeah, you can bleep me out, too, if I just say the number. Um,
yeah, that'd be good for you. That that we [laughter] don't care. I'm trying to protect you. Uh yeah, 250
250 thou not $250 which some people still have as a
so uh yeah in 2026 if Bitcoin gets to 200 or 250,000 it would be breaking the 4year cycle. Um, so that's sort of part of our view is that this, you know, if you follow the four-year cycle, Bitcoin should be down this year, but I think that there are tailwinds that are building. And part of it is we kind of reset leverage on October 10th with that big shock,
right?
And now I think there is still institutional adoption taking place and Wall Street is still building a lot of products on the blockchain and then we have US government support. So, I think these are tailwinds that help Bitcoin recover this year.
The word is if. He said if Bitcoin got to 200K or 250K, it would be breaking the four-year cycle. That's the old pattern where Bitcoin has a big run than a bad year about every four years. And he said if that cycle held, Bitcoin should be down this year. He still thought Bitcoin would recover this year.
But here's where we are. Bitcoin started this year at about $87,600. It's about 78K right now, depending on when you're watching this video. So far, this year has gone the way he said the four-year cycle would. And most people never heard that if.
All anyone kept hearing was $250,000 was coming. And by May, Tom Lee had brought it all the way down to 150K to 200K. Even the bottom of that range needs Bitcoin to nearly double by New Year's Eve. So that's Bitcoin. Now, let's get to the one that you care about, $8 XRP.
In April of 2025, Standard Charters said XRP would hit 8 bucks by the end of 2026. And when a bank that size puts $8 on XRP, it doesn't stay with their clients. It ends up everywhere, all over the news. For a lot of holders, $8 became the number they were holding for. Then in January, an even bigger one went around.
You probably saw this one. Elon Musk's AI said XRP hits $10 by the end of 2026. But that prediction is a lot smaller than it sounds. Someone asked Grock, the AI built into X, to edit a picture of the XRP chart to show how high it could go. And Grock drew $10.
That was the whole prediction, a picture edited. And when people pushed it, Grock called its own $10 a fun hypothetical. Then someone bet it $100 that XRP wouldn't get there. And Grock actually took the bet. So $10 never came from anyone who studies XRP, but a lot of people held on to it like it did.
Now, I don't think that's too far-fetched. I personally believe XRP will hit $10, but I don't know when that will happen. I think it's inevitable at some point, but I'm not putting a date on it. Now, what would it take to reach those numbers from here? With about two months left in the year, XRP has to go up more than six times to reach $8.
For $10, it's eight times. And at $10, all the XRP out there would be worth about $634 billion. That would be around 40% of everything Bitcoin is worth. That's a lot to ask in just 2 months from right now. So, what was $8 built on?
Well, it only worked if a few big things went right this year, and every one of them went the other way. But at the start of this year, it all looked possible. The ETFs were open, so anyone with a brokerage account could buy Bitcoin and XRP. Most people expected interest rates to come down, and the Clarity Act, which is the bill that would finally give crypto clear rules in America, looked close. Put those together, and you can see how smart people got to big numbers.
But none of that went according to plan. Let's start first with the Clarity Act. On September 15th, the bill reached the Senate and it needed 60 votes just to open debate. It got 49 with 50 against. Crypto groups have spent about $176 million on this year's election, and nobody knows yet if that can change a vote like this one.
The last time anyone checked, there was no new vote on the calendar. Seven Democratic senators say they want to keep talking. So, it isn't dead. But the bill a lot of those bullish calls leaned on is stuck right now. And rates went the wrong way, too.
Instead of cutting, the Fed raised rates in September. On October 28th, it held them steady. But two of the people voting wanted another rate hike. And before that meeting, traders put the odds of a December hike at 78%. And that hit a coin like XRP hard because when rates go up, a savings account or a government bond pays you more for doing nothing.
So the money that might have gone into a coin that could double or could have goes somewhere boring instead. The higher rates go, the harder it is generally for crypto to win that money back. Now, that's not necessarily true every time because you guys know the economy is pretty wonky and sometimes when things should go a certain way, they go the opposite way. But if you look at the ETF money, well, by late August, more money had left the US Bitcoin ETFs this year than had come in by more than $2 billion. So, the big wave of new money people expected never came.
And you can feel all this in your own money, too. If you bought XRP on the first day of 2026 at about $184, you're down about a third right now. If you hold a,000 XRP, it's worth about $1,250. At $8, it would be about $8,000. So holders have sat through a whole year of headlines and the price is still lower than where it started and a lot of people are losing hope right now.
Most of XRP holders are starting to feel that way. All this news and XRP has nothing to show for it. Now here's what makes it worse. While you were waiting on $8 for XRP, the bank had already moved on. It didn't even wait for that vote in September.
Back in February, less than 2 months into the year, the bank sent a note to its clients and cut its XRP target from $8 to $2.80. That's about 65%. So, if you held all spring waiting for eight bucks, you were waiting on a number the bank had already cut. And it wasn't only XRP. Every target came down at once.
Bitcoin went from $150 to 100K. Ethereum went from $7,500 to $4,000 and Salana from $250 to 135. The bank said money was leaving the ETFs and people were less willing to take risks. And Kendrick put it like this. Recent price action for digital assets has been challenging to say the least.
But the bank did keep one number. It still says XRP hits $28 by 2030. So, the number nobody can check for another four years survived there. Of course, it did. And the one with the date coming up got cut.
And honestly, cutting a target, it's normal. A bank builds a target from a few guesses like how much money flows into the ETFs. But when the guesses change, the target has to change, too. And the cut even made the crypto news. But a lot of holders never heard the new number.
And the $8 XRP price target just kept going around. And even the cut number is a long way off, too. To reach $2.80. 80s by December 31st. XRP has to more than double in 2 months.
And one holder put it simply. Targets move more than the price does. And you can see it. The bank's number fell about 65%. XRP fell about a third.
Now, what can still happen by December 31st? Well, the closest number is the bank's $100,000 for Bitcoin. That only needs about 29%. In August, Kendrick even said it might end up too low. and where Bitcoin goes still decides a lot for what happens next to XRP because XRP is still tied to Bitcoin on how the price moves. It's more correlated to Bitcoin than you think.
So, did they lie to you about these price targets for 2026? Well, from everything we found. They didn't lie. We didn't find anyone saying something they knew was false, but most of those big numbers are still a long way off and the majority of them are going to be wrong. The rate cuts never came.
The Clarity Act got stuck and the ETF money didn't come in the way that people hoped for. And the way those numbers reach you was worse than the calls and the price predictions themselves. The big numbers got shared everywhere. The big ifs and the corrections mostly didn't. So, think about what that did to you as a holder.
Maybe you bought more in January because AI predicted 10 bucks. Maybe you held all spring for 8 bucks and the bank had already cut it to $2.80 in February. Maybe you didn't take any profit because $250,000 was coming and you never heard the if. You made real decisions with your own money on numbers that had already changed or were never as solid as they sounded. And that's what really hurt.
You sat through a whole year of this. You held through every drop. You kept waiting and you trusted the people who were supposed to know. And nobody sent you a message when the numbers change. Nobody calls to say the bank cut its price target.
You just keep holding. You find out months later. And maybe you clicked on this video expecting me to give some crazy price target. That's not the purpose of this video. As you can tell throughout the course of this, my goal is to help you be honest with yourself for a second.
Because if you've been operating your whole portfolio off of price predictions and hope and you're down on your money, listen up here. The main question I have for you right now is what number are you holding for right now? Maybe it's not $8 anymore. Maybe it's just getting back to what you paid to break even. Now ask yourself, where did that number come from?
And what's your plan if it never comes or if it comes years down the road? After a year like this, those are tough questions to answer about your own coins because you've got too much writing on the answer. So, it helps to sit down with someone who can look at your coins with a clear head that's been in this industry for longer than you. My research team has been in crypto since 2016, and we put together a private intelligence network where we take calls with investors just like you to help you map out the best possible strategy for yourself going forward. My team looks at what you hold.
You don't reveal your private keys. We don't manage your funds. You don't even need to tell us the dollar amount. That's not the goal of the call. Our goal is to identify what you're really holding for.
What strategy are you implementing right now? Then we see how much of your plan rests on somebody else's price prediction and what you do if that number never really comes. So that way you go into next year with a plan of your own rather than just relying on hope. And if you want to see some of the reviews people have left about us, you can type in bull runners on Trustpilot or you can search altcoin pro. Then you can book a call through the first link in the description below.
It says get your free crypto portfolio review on mobile. All you got to do is tap the button that says more and it's the first link at the top. There's a short video, then a form that takes about a minute, and then you pick a time to speak with an expert on my team. So, do that right now because next year's big price targets are going to keep coming. When you hear one, ask one thing.
What's your game plan for when it doesn't happen? Because you need to be prepared for all scenarios. The price prediction coming true, the price prediction not coming true, and your plan in the middle. So, as always, I'll see you on the next video through the link below. Watch that right now.
I'll see you at the top. You know what to do. Stay bullish.
[music]
Hey, hey, hey. [music]
Education and commentary only, not financial advice. Crypto is volatile and you can lose money. Do your own research and speak to a qualified advisor before making investment decisions. Figures and quotes are as reported in the video on November 4, 2026 and may have changed since.
