Key points
- Bitcoin fell from $82,170 on Kraken late on Monday to $81,099.7 in the 01:00 UTC bar on Tuesday, a 1.3% dip, and was back near $82,030 at 04:03 UTC. Coinbase showed $82,028.
- South Korea’s Kospi hit an intraday low of 5,493.24, 4.8% below Monday’s close, as foreign investors sold chipmakers, Yonhap and Aju Press reported. It was still down about 3.5% at 03:43 UTC.
- Monday’s US spot bitcoin ETFs took in $526.7 million, the most since 22 Sep, by Farside data. Price did not follow: the line that would turn the structure is still $84,250, about 2.7% above the market.
Monday’s US session ended quiet. Seoul did not.
Bitcoin traded near $82,030 on Kraken at 04:03 UTC, about 0.2% above the UTC-day open and roughly $1,070 below Monday’s $83,100 high. Ether was near $2,411, about 1.7% above its 24-hour low of $2,370.
Solana was near $105.16 and XRP near $1.303. As how Monday ended showed, bitcoin stalled under $83,100 while the Nasdaq rose 1.1%.
Seoul’s sell-off, and bitcoin’s smaller version of it
The Kospi opened 0.6% lower and kept falling. It reached 5,493.24 at its low, Yonhap reported, with chipmakers leading the decline on concerns about spending in the AI supply chain.
Foreign investors had sold 605.8 billion won, about $456 million, of Korean shares by 10:30 a.m. Seoul time, Aju Press reported. Institutions sold 470.7 billion won; individuals bought 832.1 billion won.
SK hynix dipped under 1.2 million won, a level it had not traded below in almost six months, Aju said. The selling came a day after US chip stocks rebounded.
Bitcoin did not fall 4.8%. It fell 1.3%. But the timing lines up: its weakest 15 minutes started at 01:00 UTC, and Yahoo Finance’s five-minute data put the Kospi’s deepest close at 01:10 UTC.
Both then recovered together. By 03:43 UTC the Kospi was 3.5% down, and bitcoin was back above $82,000 by 03:45 UTC.
The rest of Asia was softer but calmer. Japan’s Nikkei 225 was down 0.8% and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng 0.9%. The Shanghai Composite was up 0.3%.
China left its benchmark lending rates alone. The one-year loan prime rate stayed at 3.0% and the five-year at 3.5%, according to the China Foreign Exchange Trade System, at 01:00 UTC.
US index futures were flat: Nasdaq 100 futures up 0.04% and S&P 500 futures up 0.2% at 03:53 UTC. Brent crude was near $109.80 a barrel, gold near $4,164 and the dollar index near 101.8.
The US 10-year yield closed Monday at 5.14%, up from 5.10%. Our guide on how bond yields move bitcoin explains why that weighs on an asset with no yield.
Derivatives stayed calm
Funding stayed close to flat. Deribit’s bitcoin perpetual showed 0.007% per eight hours, and OKX 0.01% for the current period after 0.0082% last settled.
Deribit perpetual open interest was about $844 million, about the same as on Monday evening. The DVOL index read 37.39.
Put simply, DVOL is Deribit’s gauge of how much volatility options traders expect over the next 30 days; 37 implies a typical daily move of about 2%. The overnight dip stayed inside that.
Bitcoin’s share of total crypto market value was 59.6% on CoinGecko.
The level to watch is $82,170, the overnight high. Acceptance above it reopens Monday’s $83,100 high, then the $84,250 line. A sustained break below $81,100 would put Sunday’s $80,568 low back in play, with Friday’s $78,000 put strike below that.
A different reading
Seoul may be only part of it. Kraken’s busiest hour of the night ran from 00:00 to 01:00 UTC, about 88 BTC against 19 BTC the hour before, and bitcoin had already touched $81,344 inside it, before the Kospi’s worst. The 01:00 UTC low also matched China’s rate decision.
Bitcoin’s dip was a quarter of the Kospi’s, and $526.7 million of ETF demand on Monday did not lift price either. Until the US open, the tape has little of its own to trade.
Watch $82,170 before you watch Seoul.
Chart to watch
- The lead chart: bitcoin’s dip and recovery against the Kospi from the 00:00 UTC open.
- Overhead: $82,170, the overnight high, then $83,100, Monday’s high, then $84,250, the 12 Oct high and our flip line for the market mood.
- Below: $81,099.7, Tuesday’s low, then $80,567.9, Sunday’s low.
On the calendar (UTC / CEST)
- Tue 20 Oct: South Korea’s finance ministry and Financial Services Commission meet the five won-market exchanges on the 22% crypto tax, which a ruling-party bill would delay to 2029; see our preview. No readout had been published by 04:00 UTC. About 13:00 UTC (15:00 CEST): France’s solemn vote on the revenue half of its 2027 budget, which includes the crypto-to-stablecoin swap tax.
- Wed 21 Oct, about 15:00 UTC (17:00 CEST): Solana’s Alpenglow upgrade is due to activate with epoch 1064, per the Solana Foundation.
- Thu 22 Oct, 23:30 UTC (Fri 01:30 CEST): Japan’s September consumer prices, per the Statistics Bureau.
- Fri 23 Oct, 08:00 UTC (10:00 CEST): Deribit weekly options expiry; see our week-ahead calendar.
As of 04:03 UTC (06:03 CEST), bitcoin was trading near $82,030 on Kraken and ether near $2,411. This is market commentary, not financial advice.
Related: ETF Desk: Monday's bitcoin ETF inflow, fund by fund
Related: Tuesday's US close: bitcoin spikes after the open, then fades
Related: The next First Print, on 21 Oct, as Seoul rebounded
This article is for information only and is not investment advice.