Citi Raises Its Bitcoin Forecast to $113,000

A Citi research note dated Wednesday, and reported by Reuters on 1 October, lifts the bank's 12-month forecasts for bitcoin and ether. The line that will travel farthest is the Citi bitcoin price target $113,000 October 2026, up from $82,000. The same note takes the 12-month ether forecast to $3,028 from $2,240.

These are the bank's forecasts. They are not a recommendation, and they are not advice from this publication.

What happened

Reuters reported the note on 1 October. CoinDesk, updated the same day, reports the same two targets and the same inflow figure. A price target, in this setting, is a forecast of where the bank thinks the price may stand at a stated horizon. The horizon here is 12 months.

Raising a target means the new forecast sits above the bank's previous one. It does not instruct any client to take a position, and it does not bind the market.

The bitcoin move is from $82,000 to $113,000. The ether move is from $2,240 to $3,028. Citi tied the changes to three factors: stronger activity, a supportive macro backdrop, and ETF inflows resuming. A macro backdrop is the broader economic setting.

"Supportive," in the note as reported, is the bank's adjective for that setting. This article does not unpack it into growth rates, currency moves, or an interest-rate path, because those details are not in the reports used here.

The inflow line is separate and quantitative. Citi expects about $5 billion of inflows over the next 12 months. The pace, the bank said, should be slower but steadier as advisers add bitcoin. That sentence is about exchange-traded funds and about advisers putting bitcoin into the mix they run for clients.

It is the bank's expectation of flow, sitting beside the bank's expectation of price. CoinDesk's update carries both the targets and the $5 billion figure, which is why it can be read as confirmation of the Reuters account rather than as a second, different note.

The Reuters account is the 1 October report. CoinDesk's version is its update the same day.

Why it matters

Banks publish targets so clients can see the house view in a single number. The number is a forecast with a date attached, here 12 months, and with a list of reasons. Citi's reasons are stronger activity, a macro setting the bank calls supportive, and a resumption of ETF inflows. Anyone quoting the $113,000 figure without those reasons is quoting a destination and hiding the map the bank actually offered.

Anyone treating the destination as an instruction is making a further mistake. A research target is not an order. Citi did not, in the reports used here, tell the public to take any particular action. This article will not add that instruction under another verb.

The size of the revision is part of the news, and it can be stated without cheering it. Bitcoin's 12-month forecast moved from $82,000 to $113,000. Ether's moved from $2,240 to $3,028. Both are increases in the bank's own prior marks.

A reader who wants to know whether the old marks were too low, or the new ones too high, will not find that judgment in a straight report of the note. The judgment Citi made is the revision itself. The judgment this article refuses is any ranking of whether the reader should act on it.

The $5 billion inflow expectation is the mechanism the bank put under the price view, or at least beside it. About $5 billion over 12 months, slower but steadier, as advisers add bitcoin. "Slower but steadier" is a description of pace, not a promise that the flow arrives in equal monthly installments. "As advisers add bitcoin" is the channel Citi named.

Advisers, in this sentence, are the professional managers who decide what goes into a client's portfolio. The bank expects that channel to contribute to ETF inflows. It does not, in the material used here, name the advisers, the funds, or a month-by-month schedule.

Two outlets reporting the same targets on the same day reduces the chance that a figure has been misheard. Reuters has the note dated Wednesday and the three reasons. CoinDesk, updated 1 October, has both targets and the $5 billion.

Where they overlap, they agree. This article does not add a third target, a different horizon, or a price for any other asset.

For related market context, see Bitcoin ETF outflows and Evernorth XRP treasury.

What's next

The forecasts now stand until Citi revises them. Nothing in the 1 October reports sets a date for the next note. The horizon the bank did set is 12 months, and the flow window it did set is the same stretch: about $5 billion of inflows, at a pace it expects to be slower but steadier.

Readers who file the numbers should file the label with them. The $113,000 bitcoin figure and the $3,028 ether figure are Citi's forecasts, raised from $82,000 and $2,240. They rest, on the bank's account, on stronger activity, a supportive macro backdrop, and ETF inflows resuming. They are not a recommendation to anyone reading them here.

A forecast can be right or wrong. Quoting it accurately does not turn it into advice, and disagreeing with it does not require pretending the note said something else.

The primary record is the Reuters report of the Wednesday note, with CoinDesk's same-day update on the two targets and the inflow figure. That is the whole of the news. The rest is discipline about what a bank's target is: a view, a horizon, and a set of reasons, published for the record.