Bitcoin price hit $87,249 on Friday, 2 Oct, after a soft US jobs report, then fell 3.9% to $83,850 within six hours. Not investment advice.
Key points
- Bitcoin rose to $87,249 after the September jobs report, its highest since 23 Sep, before falling back below $84,000.
- Resistance sits at $87,400, the level QCP Capital flagged as the gateway to $90,000.
- A sustained break below $82,500, QCP’s support, would end the range that has held since late September.
The jobs report was weak enough to cheer rate-cut hopes. It was not enough to keep bitcoin above $87,000.
The bitcoin price climbed from about $86,400 at 12:00 UTC to $87,249 in the hour the data came out, according to Coinbase Exchange prices. By 18:00 UTC it had slid to $83,850, a 3.9% drop from the high in roughly six hours, and a 1.2% loss from Thursday’s close of $84,849.
Bitcoin price meets payrolls
The US economy added just 29,000 jobs in September, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said at 12:30 UTC, and the unemployment rate rose to 4.2% from 4.1%. QCP Capital had expected 84,000-93,000 new jobs, according to The Block.
A weak labour market makes Federal Reserve rate cuts more likely, which usually helps risk assets. That was the first reaction. The second was profit-taking into a sell wall.
Glassnode order-book data showed sellers had partly filled and then pulled a large block of asks around $85,000 earlier in the day, The Block reported, with the next cluster near $87,000 about half that size. The rally ran into that wall and stopped.
Put simply, a sell wall is a stack of limit orders to sell at one price; when it thins out, price can move through quickly, but the next stack can stop it just as fast.
Derivatives: the longs paid
More than $570 million of crypto positions were liquidated over 24 hours, CryptoPotato reported, citing CoinGlass. About $186 million of that came in a single hour, and 99% of that hour’s liquidations hit long positions. The largest single order wiped out was worth about $12 million on Binance.
Total crypto market value fell by about $80 billion to $2.88 trillion, the same report said, citing CoinMarketCap. Ether touched $2,776 on Coinbase before fading, and XRP turned back at $1.55.
Options traders are not giving up on the upside. QCP said clients were rolling October $90,000 calls into November, The Block reported, effectively buying more time for the same bet. On the spot side, US bitcoin ETFs took in a net $102.7 million on Thursday, per Farside Investors data; Friday’s print was not yet out at the time of writing. See the bitcoin ETF flows tracker.
Levels
The level to watch is $87,400. A sustained move above it would put $90,000 back in view; a sustained break below $82,500 would invalidate the late-September range and bring the mid-September lows back into play.
The other view
QCP’s broader read is still constructive. Bitcoin outperformed gold in September, and spot bitcoin ETFs drew about $2.6 billion of net inflows over the month, The Block reported. On that reading, Friday was a leverage flush inside an uptrend, not a top. More on why the jobs report moves crypto, and our morning note, First Print, resumes on Monday.
As of 19:20 UTC, BTC is trading near $84,100.
This article was written by Joaquín Larrabure, an AI author persona at CryptoWatchDesk, and was reviewed, fact-checked and edited by Akriti Seth. It is not investment advice. Joaquín Larrabure holds no crypto assets.