Your European-morning market read for Friday 16 Oct 2026.
By Joaquín Larrabure, Markets · 16 Oct 2026, 04:17 UTC
The bounce held overnight. The put wall expires at 08:00 UTC. Monday’s $84,250 high is still untouched. (CryptoWatchDesk, data: Kraken)
Key points
- Bitcoin traded near $81,890 on Kraken at 03:46 UTC, after Thursday’s UTC day closed at $82,133.7. The session low on Thursday was $79,709 on Kraken and $79,676.02 on Coinbase, then the US afternoon repaired into the low $82,000s.
- Deribit’s weekly bitcoin options expire at 08:00 UTC (10:00 CEST) with about 17,870 BTC of open interest, puts outnumbering calls 1.27 to one. The largest lines remain the $78,000 put (2,742 BTC) and the $80,000 put (1,861 BTC).
- US spot bitcoin ETFs show a provisional −$11.7 million on Farside’s 15 October row with BlackRock’s IBIT still blank; ether funds show −$15.9 million with ETHA and ETHB blank.
The repair survived the night. The expiry has not.
Bitcoin changed hands near $81,892 on Kraken at 03:46 UTC (05:46 CEST), with Coinbase near $81,686. Ether was near $2,431, Solana near $104.9 and XRP near $1.33. Overnight so far, Kraken’s low sits at $81,576.6 in the 03:00 UTC hour — well above Thursday’s US-session floor.
Thursday evening’s bounce Market Read logged the reclaim after Thursday’s PPI market read printed the first sub-$80,000 trade since mid-September. That sequence still frames the morning: a hot producer-price print, a flush, a bounce that did not retake Monday’s high.
Put simply, the wall is the book
Put simply, a put wall is a strike where a large open interest in put options sits below spot. It does not force price lower by itself. It tells you where dealers and hedgers have the most put exposure into an expiry, and where the tape often gets noisy as those contracts roll off.
Friday’s book still leans that way. At about 03:45 UTC Deribit showed 17,870 BTC of open interest on 16 Oct options, about $1.46 billion at the ~$81,750 index, with puts at 10,009 BTC and calls at 7,861 BTC. The $78,000 put (2,742 BTC) and the $80,000 put (1,861 BTC) remain the two largest lines, just as our week-ahead on the 16 Oct expiry flagged over the weekend and Thursday morning’s First Print refreshed after Seoul’s session.
Implied vol has cooled a notch from the PPI spike. Deribit’s DVOL closed the 03:00 UTC hour at 37.86, which implies a move of about 2.0% a day. Our 48-hour realised volatility from Kraken hourly closes is about 46%, annualised — inflated by Thursday’s wick — so implied is no longer clearly expensive versus the last two days of tape.
Leverage looks quiet, not flushed. Funding on Deribit’s perpetual was about 0.0026% per eight hours and OKX’s BTC swap rate about 0.0023%. Open interest on Deribit’s perpetual was about $865 million, a touch under the ~$871 million we logged in the evening bounce read.
Flows are still incomplete
ETF money for Thursday is only half-printed. Farside’s bitcoin table shows a 15 October total of −$11.7 million, with Bitwise’s BTCO at −$4.1 million and Grayscale’s BTC at −$7.6 million and every other named cell at 0.0 — except IBIT, which is still a dash. Ether funds show −$15.9 million, led by Grayscale’s ETHE at −$18.3 million and Fidelity’s FETH at +$2.4 million, with BlackRock’s ETHA and ETHB still blank. We will not run a full ETF Desk until those cells fill; Wednesday’s ETF Desk already carried the completed −$261.4 million CPI-day outflow.
Stablecoin supply sits near $306 billion on DefiLlama. That stock has not broken lower with the PPI wick, so the cash layer on-chain is still intact even as spot sits under $84,250.
The levels into 08:00 UTC
The level that matters into the expiry is $80,000. Spot held overnight above it after reclaiming it on Thursday afternoon. A sustained break back under $80,000 would put the $78,000 put line back in the tape; a hold above $82,500 would keep the bounce structure from Thursday’s US session. Overhead, Monday’s $84,250 high is still the flip line for our Brief mood.
Watch the expiry, not the overnight wick.
Chart to watch
- Kraken’s path this week: Monday high $84,250; Tuesday low $80,951.2; Wednesday close $81,576.4; Thursday low $79,709 and close $82,133.7; Friday so far holding the low $81,500s to low $82,000s.
- Overhead: $82,538 (Thursday high), then $84,049 and $84,250.
- Below: $81,576 (overnight so far), then $80,000 and $78,000 — the two biggest put strikes into 08:00 UTC.
On the calendar (UTC / CEST)
- Fri 16 Oct, 08:00 UTC (10:00 CEST): Deribit weekly bitcoin options expire (~17,870 BTC open interest at 03:45 UTC).
- Tue 27 to Wed 28 Oct: Federal Reserve policy meeting.
- ETF Desk: full 15 October Farside row once IBIT, ETHA and ETHB report.
As of 03:46 UTC (05:46 CEST), bitcoin was trading near $81,890 on Kraken and ether near $2,431. This is market commentary, not financial advice.
This article is for information only and is not investment advice.