Here’s what happened in crypto today

Today in crypto, Ray Dalio backed gold and “a bit” of Bitcoin as protection against a potential US debt crisis, Standard Chartered said its $100,000 year-end BTC forecast may be too low and MANTRA’s token hit a record low after its blockchain was halted over an unexplained incident.

Ray Dalio favors gold, ‘a bit’ of Bitcoin as US debt risks mount

Billionaire investor Ray Dalio is urging investors to favor gold and “a bit of Bitcoin” over bonds as he warns that the United States could face a debt crisis within the next several years.

The Bridgewater Associates founder said Friday that investors could consider allocating 10% to 15% of their portfolios to gold to reduce risk, while overweighting gold and Bitcoin relative to debt assets. Dalio pointed to mounting political and geopolitical tensions and estimated that a US debt crisis could emerge in roughly three years, unless the country changes course.

Dalio has historically been more cautious on Bitcoin than gold, arguing that the cryptocurrency cannot replace the precious metal as a store of value and raising concerns about privacy and quantum computing. Still, his latest comments continue a gradual shift toward accepting BTC as a portfolio hedge. In 2022, he described a 1% to 2% Bitcoin allocation as “reasonable.”

Standard Chartered wavers on $100,000 Bitcoin year-end call, says it may be ‘too low’

Bitcoin may move toward its all-time high of $126,000 before the end of the year, with the recovery potentially accelerating after Oct. 6, according to Geoff Kendrick, global head of digital asset research at Standard Chartered.

Kendrick said in a Friday note shared with Cointelegraph that the latest rally has been driven largely by short liquidations, while inflows into spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds have also started to recover. He said low open interest could leave room for more investors to return as prices rise.

“For the first time this year there is now a risk my end year forecast (of USD100k) is too low,” Kendrick wrote.

In a Feb. 12 report, Kendrick cut Standard Chartered’s year-end Bitcoin target to $100,000 from $150,000 and its Ether target to $4,000 from $7,500. At the time, he expected Bitcoin to fall to around $50,000 and Ether to $1,400 before recovering during the rest of the year.

MANTRA token sinks 18% to record low amid blockchain halt

MANTRA’s native token sank 18.5% from its 24-hour high to a record low shortly before MANTRA Chain stopped producing blocks and its team announced a precautionary halt over an unexplained incident.

According to CoinGecko, MANTRA fell from $0.005060 to an all-time low of $0.004126 around 11:00 pm UTC on Thursday. It later recovered to about $0.0044 but remained down roughly 10% over 24 hours, while trading volume climbed nearly 600% to $24 million. 

MANTRA said Friday it was “aware of an incident affecting MANTRA Chain” and had halted the network as a precaution while it investigated. “We don’t have a root cause or timeline to share yet,” the project said, adding that all endpoints and transactions were frozen. 

The halt prevents assets from moving on MANTRA Chain and has prompted affected exchanges to pause deposits and withdrawals, with no timeline given for either service to resume.