Citigroup raised its 12-month bitcoin forecast to $113,000 from $82,000 in a note dated Wednesday, and lifted its ether target from $2,240 to $3,028, citing renewed inflows into US spot exchange-traded funds and a friendlier macro backdrop, Reuters reported Thursday. The new bitcoin figure sits roughly 35 percent above the current price near $83,700, while the ether call implies about 12 percent upside from $2,690. For a bank that spent most of 2026 trimming crypto forecasts alongside the wider market, the turn is sharp, and it rests on a flow story that has already surprised traders once this quarter.
Why Citi changed its mind
The bank’s analysts pointed to a reversal in fund flows that few expected a few months ago. US spot bitcoin ETFs had run up $5.8 billion in year-to-date net outflows as of July 13, the low point of a year when crypto trailed almost every other risk asset. Since then the bleed has stopped and reversed: net inflows for 2026 stood at $800 million as of late September, according to CoinDesk. Monday alone brought $998.9 million into the funds, the biggest single day since January, with BlackRock’s IBIT leading and Fidelity and ARK not far behind. Citi treats the turn as structural rather than accidental. Its note forecasts about $5 billion of inflows into crypto investment products over the next 12 months, on the view that financial advisers and brokerages will increase bitcoin allocations gradually rather than all at once. Wirehouse advisers move slowly by design: compliance sign-offs, model portfolios and client consent all take time. That gradualism fits the behavior of the past two months, where flows rebuilt a multi-billion dollar hole week by week instead of in one burst. It also means Citi’s forecast survives even a soft month or two; the bank is not banking on a repeat of September’s record days to get there.
| Asset | Old 12-month target | New target | Implied upside |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bitcoin (BTC) | $82,000 | $113,000 | About 35% |
| Ether (ETH) | $2,240 | $3,028 | About 12% |
| 2026 BTC ETF net flows | -$5.8B (July 13) | +$800M (late Sept) | Reversal |
| Monday ETF net inflow | – | $998.9M | Biggest since Jan |
Politics did not kill the rally
The upgrade lands three weeks after the Senate failed to advance the CLARITY Act, the market-structure bill that the industry pushed hard all year. Lobbying disclosures show crypto companies spent more than $13 million in early 2026, with nearly $8 million aimed at the CLARITY Act specifically, and the bill still fell short of the 60 votes it needed on Sept. 15. The defeat looked terminal that week, and yet the damage was short-lived. Bitcoin gained more than 10 percent by the end of the month as later announcements from the Securities and Exchange Commission on market rules blunted the negative sentiment, Citi wrote. The lesson traders took from the episode is that surviving a procedural loss cost less than expected, and Citi’s analysts appear to agree. SEC rule work continues in areas the bill would have covered, including event contract definitions at the CFTC and custody guidance at the SEC, so the practical regulatory picture is moving even where legislation stalled.
The bank also flagged the Treasury Department’s buybacks of longer-dated bonds as a driver. The program, which retired outstanding debt and shortened the effective supply curve, helped risk assets break out of a months-long run of underperformance, and crypto followed. It is an indirect channel, but a real one: portfolio managers rebalancing out of long bonds had cash to redeploy, and part of it found its way into the highest-beta corner of the market.
Peers are drifting the same way
Citi is not alone in moving targets higher this week. Standard Chartered reiterated a $100,000 end-2026 call for bitcoin, and on Tuesday its analysts initiated coverage of Ethena with a $2 target for the ENA token in 2028, forecasting the USDe stablecoin would grow eightfold to around $40 billion in supply. Goldman Sachs, for its part, pushed its next Fed rate hike call to December after the soft PCE print. None of these banks is promising anything. Target revisions are cheap and reversible, and the same desks cut targets aggressively during the spring drawdown. But the direction of travel across bank research has shifted from trimming to adding, and that shift itself tends to nudge allocator behavior, because model portfolios and adviser talking points lean on published research targets.
The other side of the ledger
Not everything points up. Bitcoin spiked above $85,500 on Wednesday after August core PCE inflation printed at 3.0 percent against 3.3 percent expected, then gave back most of the move within one session as yields kept climbing. The 10-year Treasury yield hit 5.3 percent intraday, its highest since 2007, and the Dow fell 443 points on quarter-end. A government funding fight in Washington adds another macro wildcard for October, and oil above $90 a barrel keeps inflation optics uncomfortable for the Fed. Futures now put the odds of a Fed hike this month near 37 percent, down sharply from last week, but the December meeting remains live and the bond market is doing most of the tightening anyway.
Traders are watching how October opens. The seasonal pattern the market calls Uptober has a mixed record in past crypto winters, and bitcoin is still down about 8 percent for 2026 despite a 36 percent rise over 90 days and a 44 percent climb since July. Citi’s target implies conviction rather than a promise, and the bank has been wrong in both directions before. If ETF inflows keep landing at even half the September pace, the bank’s math gets easier. If yields keep rising and the shutdown drags into winter, the forecast ages quickly.