First Print 14 Nov: bitcoin below $67,000, ether $1,900

Key points

Bitcoin closed Friday at $68,235.9 on Kraken, 8.7% below Monday’s open of $74,742.4. In Saturday’s Asian hours it slid to $66,402.4, the lowest since 19 Aug, and was near $67,086 at 04:47 UTC.
Ether touched $1,875.00, its lowest since 17 Aug, and was near $1,899. Deribit’s 30-day implied volatility index, DVOL, rose to 42.6 from 39.9 three hours earlier.
Next Friday’s options expiry is lopsided: about 17,500 BTC of calls against 9,500 of puts, with the biggest call strikes between $73,000 and $76,000, well above spot.

The week closed near the lows. Saturday opened lower than that.

On Friday this column said $70,000 had gone with the 200-day line. By the US open the market had tried to take it back: the Market Read caught the $70,190 spike after producer prices, which faded within the hour. Friday’s candle ran from $71,370.7 to a low of $67,500.0 and closed 4.4% lower.

Kraken’s Saturday candle has run from $68,237.4 to $66,402.4 so far. Coinbase showed $67,083.65 at 04:47 UTC.

A quiet night, then a gap down

Bitcoin spent the first two hours of Saturday going nowhere. The 00:00 and 01:00 UTC hours closed at $68,261.7 and $68,211.7, both within $30 of the Friday close.

The drop came in the 02:00 UTC hour, when the price went from $68,252.8 to $66,839.5, about $1,400 in sixty minutes. The next two hours added a further $440: the 03:00 hour closed at $66,683.5 and the 04:00 hour touched $66,402.4.

Put simply: a quick drop in a quiet weekend market often means a thin order book. Fewer people are quoting prices, so one large order can move further than it would on a Tuesday. The data here do not show who sold.

Ether fell the same way, from about $1,927 at Friday’s close to $1,875.00, then back to near $1,899. Solana was near $75.51, with a 24-hour low of $74.74, and XRP near $0.9935 after touching $0.9832.

What the derivatives say

Funding was positive but small: 0.0016% per eight hours on Deribit’s bitcoin perpetual and 0.0020% on OKX’s current period, after 0.0039% at its last settlement. That is not a crowded long. Deribit’s perpetual open interest was about $710 million.

DVOL, which measures the volatility traders pay for in 30-day options, was 42.6 at 04:00 UTC. It spent the previous 24 hours between 39.1 and 40.8.

The nearest expiry matters little: Deribit’s 08:00 UTC contracts today carry about 2,100 BTC of calls and 1,900 of puts.

The one to watch is Friday 20 Nov. About 17,500 BTC of calls and 9,500 of puts are open.

The biggest call strikes are $76,000 (about 3,150 BTC), $73,000 (3,000) and $74,000 (2,550), all above where bitcoin trades now. The biggest put strike is $70,000, with about 1,850 BTC.

The monthly expiry on 27 Nov is bigger, at about 46,900 BTC of calls and 40,300 of puts. Its largest single strikes are $90,000 calls (5,050 BTC) and $58,000 puts (4,000), with $68,000 puts close behind at 3,750.

Flows were no help either. US spot bitcoin ETFs lost $185.4 million on Friday, Farside data show, and $1,065.3 million over the week. For the mechanics of forced selling, see how a liquidation works.

Weekend is when the bid is thinnest. Watch the 08:00 UTC expiry for the first sign of whether $67,000 sells again.

Chart to watch

Kraken daily candles with the 200-day average: Friday’s close sits about $4,800 under the line, near $73,036 on our count, and Saturday’s low is about $6,600 under it.
Below: $66,402.4, today’s low, then the August lows: the last daily low under it was $64,115.9 on 19 Aug.
Above: $68,236, Friday’s close, then $70,000, which broke on Friday. The 50-day average is near $80,540, and $84,250, the line this desk uses for the Brief mood, is about $17,200 away.

On the calendar (UTC / CET)

Sat 14 Nov, 08:00 UTC (09:00 CET): Deribit daily bitcoin options expiry.
Mon 16 Nov: Farside’s next ETF row, for Monday’s session.
Thu 19 Nov, 15:00 UTC (16:00 CET): Senate Banking Committee nomination hearing, 10:00 ET, per the committee calendar.
Fri 20 Nov, 08:00 UTC (09:00 CET): Deribit weekly expiry, about 27,000 BTC open. Binance also says it aims to finish reopening withdrawals by the end of the week, per its Saturday update.

As of 04:47 UTC (05:47 CET), bitcoin was trading near $67,086 on Kraken and ether near $1,899.

This article is for information only and is not investment advice.