Bitcoin firms up near $81,700 after tech-led wobble
Bitcoin advanced 0.5% since midnight UTC to trade around $81,700, recovering from a low of roughly $81,000 as Asian equities stabilised following Thursday’s technology-led selloff. The modest gain in the largest cryptocurrency masked a sharper move lower down the risk curve, where altcoins outpaced the market leader by a comfortable margin.
Ether climbed 0.9%, while the CoinDesk 80 (CD80) altcoin index rose 1.4%. The memecoin indicator performed better still, jumping 2.9%, with the frog-themed token pepe surging 13% to lead the broader CoinDesk 100 index. The recovery marks a strikingly quick turnaround from the previous session, when risk assets across the board were dragged lower by a bruising day for US technology shares.
The divergence is worth noting. When bitcoin dips alongside equities, as it did on Thursday, altcoins typically fall harder, amplifying losses through a leverage-driven cascade. The same mechanism works in reverse. A 0.5% move in bitcoin translating into nearly 3% for memecoins suggests traders are once again reaching for higher-beta exposure, a tentative signal that appetite for speculative risk is returning after a brief period of retrenchment.
For broader coverage of the largest cryptocurrency, see our Bitcoin coverage.
Equity backdrop calms after Nasdaq’s sharpest fall since June
The bounce in digital assets tracks a calmer session in Asian equity markets. Thursday’s selloff saw the Nasdaq Composite slide 2.6%, its sharpest single-day decline since June, as investors dumped technology stocks. That rout spilled into crypto, with bitcoin briefly slipping towards $81,000 before finding a floor.
Asian markets stabilised overnight. South Korea’s Kospi edged up 0.3% and China’s CSI 300 gained 1.7%, while Japan’s Nikkei 225 slipped 0.25%. The mixed but broadly steadier picture gave crypto traders room to rebuild positions without fear of a renewed equity shock during the Asian session.
The link between the two asset classes remains tight. Bitcoin has increasingly traded as a high-beta proxy for technology equities, moving in sympathy with the Nasdaq during periods of stress. A stabilisation in stocks, even a partial one, tends to remove the most immediate downside pressure on crypto prices, and that appears to be what played out overnight.
Attention now turns to the Federal Reserve meeting on 27 and 28 October. The policy gathering looms as the next major catalyst, with Brent crude holding around $113 a barrel and keeping inflation concerns firmly alive. Persistent strength in energy prices complicates the Fed’s task, and traders will be parsing the meeting’s outcome for any shift in the rate path. A hawkish surprise would likely hit risk assets, including crypto, while a dovish tilt could extend the nascent recovery.
ETF flows turn negative after strong start to the week
The spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds provided an unwelcome subplot to Thursday’s decline. US spot bitcoin ETFs lost $635 million on Thursday, according to data from SoSoValue, a sharp reversal after more than $1 billion of inflows across the first three days of the week.
The swing underscores how quickly institutional sentiment can rotate. A week that began with strong accumulation ended with a significant withdrawal, suggesting that at least some ETF investors treated the equity-led selloff as a reason to de-risk rather than an opportunity to buy the dip. Whether flows turn positive again in the coming sessions will be a key gauge of conviction behind the rebound.
Traders are watching daily inflow and outflow data closely in the run-up to the Fed meeting. ETF demand has become a structural pillar of the bitcoin market, and sustained outflows would deprive the current recovery of its most important source of steady buying pressure.
Derivatives cool off as traders quietly rebuild positions
Futures market activity moderated after a turbulent session. Crypto futures volume fell 19% over 24 hours, while liquidations dropped 23%, a day after both metrics had spiked during the selloff. Open interest rose 1% after declining the previous day, even as bitcoin’s price barely moved, indicating that traders are adding fresh positions rather than simply closing old ones.
The long/short taker volume ratio tilts slightly towards shorts, at 51.6% against 48.4%, so selling interest has not vanished entirely.
A key gauge of order flow, the open interest-corrected cumulative volume delta (CVD), points to what analysts might call a bullish reset. The measure tracks whether market orders are predominantly buys or sells, adjusted for changes in open positions. On Thursday most tokens finished the day below zero, with the weakest around -0.12%. Today, nearly all tokens sit within 0.05% of zero. The selling pressure that dragged prices lower has, at least for now, dissipated.
The majors show a picture of quiet rebuilding. Open interest in both bitcoin and ether futures rose roughly 1% while prices moved little, pointing to modest new position creation. Liquidations fell sharply, dropping by around two-thirds at bitcoin and one-third at ether. Bitcoin’s funding rate ticked up to 0.0067% from 0.0041%, meaning longs are paying slightly more to hold their positions. Ether’s funding was unchanged.
Funding rates in BNB and SUI flipped back into positive territory. Yesterday, shorts paid longs in both tokens, with funding of -0.0048% and -0.0036% respectively. Today all three of BNB, SUI and DOGE carry positive funding, and with prices higher across the trio, it is now longs rather than shorts footing the bill.
Not every token is participating in the recovery. De-risking continues in ZEC, SOL, XRP and DOGE, where open interest has fallen by more than price moves alone can explain, a sign that positions are being actively closed rather than marked down. ZEC is the most pronounced case, with open interest down 8% against a price fall of just 1.5%. It is the second consecutive day of heavy outflows, a pattern consistent with capital flight from the privacy coin.
Commodity perpetuals continue to attract fresh money. Open interest rose for a second straight day in gold, silver and crude oil. Gold and silver prices fell, with positive funding in both, meaning longs are bearing the costs. Crude oil open interest climbed alongside a 1.4% price rise, but funding there is negative, so shorts are paying. The gold-pegged token XAUT stands apart, showing the deepest negative OI-corrected CVD of any token, at around -0.25%, indicating market sells dominated.
Meanwhile, the funding spike in Monero has flattened. XMR funding was earlier the most notable reading on the 24-hour heatmap but has since cooled to normal levels, and the previously reported build-up of leverage has unwound.
Options market tilts: upside calls for bitcoin, downside protection for ether
The options market reveals a clear split in sentiment between the two largest cryptocurrencies.
Bitcoin activity is concentrated in upside calls. The most traded option is the 27 November call with a $98,000 strike, followed by the 25 December call at $88,000. Five of the six most active bitcoin options are calls struck above the market price. The only put among them is a $76,000 contract expiring on 30 October. The volume figures do not indicate whether the trades were buys or sells, so the heavy call activity could in principle reflect either bullish positioning or call selling, but the concentration well above spot at least signals where traders expect the action to lie.
Ether tells the opposite story. Puts occupy the top two spots by activity, led by the 26 October put struck at $2,200, with roughly 9,000 contracts traded. That put-heavy bias is corroborated by the skew data. Ether’s one-week 25-delta put-call skew sits at nearly 13%, making puts substantially more expensive than calls, and it has risen since the start of October.
Bitcoin’s one-week skew, by contrast, has fallen to around 4%, down from a mid-month peak near 14%. In plain terms, demand for downside protection in bitcoin has eased considerably, while in ether it has grown. The divergence aligns neatly with the intensive put activity in ether options and suggests traders are far more worried about a downward move in the second-largest cryptocurrency than in the first.
What it means
The overnight session offers a textbook example of a market catching its breath rather than charging ahead. Bitcoin’s 0.5% gain is unremarkable on its own, but the underlying detail is constructive: liquidations have collapsed, open interest is growing without a price decline, funding remains modest, and the open interest-corrected CVD has reset to neutral across nearly the entire token spectrum. That combination suggests Thursday’s flush removed weak hands without triggering a broader unwinding.
The outperformance of memecoins, led by pepe’s double-digit gain, is the classic signature of risk appetite creeping back into the market’s speculative corners. It is often the earliest, and least reliable, indicator of a broader altcoin recovery. Traders would do well to treat it as a signal of mood rather than a guarantee of momentum.
Two watchpoints stand out. The first is the Fed meeting on 27 and 28 October, with Brent at $113 keeping the inflation question open and rate expectations volatile. The second is the ETF flow picture, which flipped from more than $1 billion of weekly inflows to a $635 million outflow on Thursday. If institutional buying resumes, bitcoin has a solid base around $81,000 from which to attempt a move higher, with options traders already positioning for prices towards $88,000 and $98,000. If flows stay negative into the Fed decision, the put-heavy positioning in ether may prove prescient for the wider market.
