First Print 27 Oct: Kospi rallies, bitcoin slips to $79,500

Key points

Bitcoin closed Monday at $80,001.9 on Kraken, its weakest daily close since 17 Sep and a fraction under Sunday’s. Asia then took it to $79,512.0 as of the 04:00 UTC hour.
Asian stocks rallied hard on AI chipmakers, and bitcoin did not follow. The Kospi jumped more than 4% and the Nikkei 2.2%, AP reported.
The map: $80,238.2, the overnight high, then $80,701.7 and $84,250 overhead; $79,265.0 and Saturday’s $79,120.8 below.

Stocks found a reason to buy. Bitcoin did not.

Bitcoin traded near $79,530 on Kraken at 04:53 UTC, down about 0.6% from its UTC open of $80,001.8. Coinbase showed $79,519. Ether was near $2,307, solana near $99.88 and XRP near $1.295.

Two screens, two moods

Seoul led the region. The Kospi was 3.6% higher at 5,667.99 by midday after jumping more than 4%, with SK Hynix up 7% and Samsung Electronics up 4.8%, AP reported.

Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 added 2.2% to 63,542.77. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng gave up early gains and slipped 0.2%, and Shanghai edged 0.1% lower, according to the same report.

Bitcoin drifted the other way. It peaked at $80,238.2 in the first UTC hour, then sagged for three straight hours.

The heaviest selling came in the 03:00 UTC hour, when Kraken traded 109.6 BTC and the price touched $79,512.1. That was the busiest hour on the venue since Monday’s US afternoon.

A day earlier the two moved together. Monday’s First Print lined up bitcoin’s dip at Asia’s open with a 1% fall in the Kospi.

Today the AI bid stayed inside equities. The wider crypto market lost 1.56% of its value over 24 hours, CoinGecko data show, and bitcoin’s share held at 59.4%.

Rates offered a little help. The US 10-year Treasury yield eased to 4.98%, AP said, while the two-year rose to 4.71% ahead of the Fed’s decision on Wednesday, where a hold is widely expected after last month’s hike. how bond yields affect bitcoin explains why that matters for an asset with no yield.

Brent crude fell 0.8% to $109.82 a barrel and the dollar was at 157.65 yen, according to AP.

Derivatives stayed quiet

Funding stayed small and positive. Deribit’s bitcoin perpetual showed 0.0055% per eight hours, and OKX 0.01% for the current period and the last settlement.

Deribit perpetual open interest was about $829 million, down from about $845 million on Monday morning. Leverage keeps leaking out slowly.

Put simply, open interest is the total value of futures contracts still open, so a falling figure on a falling price means traders are closing positions rather than adding new bets.

Deribit’s DVOL index read 38.35, inside a 38.15 to 38.56 band over the past six hours. Options traders are not paying up for a move before the Fed.

Wait for Wednesday’s statement before trusting any break.

Chart to watch

Kraken’s daily closes: Monday’s $80,001.9 sits $46.6 under Sunday’s $80,048.5, so the low-water mark since 17 Sep has been reset two days running. A close below $80,000 today would make it three.
Overhead: $80,238.2, the overnight high, then $80,701.7, Monday’s high, then $84,250, which bitcoin has not held on an hourly close since 21 Oct.
Below: $79,265.0, Monday’s low, then $79,120.8 from Saturday. A sustained break of $79,120.8 would put $78,000 in view, the strike where Friday’s expiring options pay holders least, by our count in our week-ahead calendar.

On the calendar (UTC / CET)

Tue 27 Oct: the Federal Open Market Committee begins its two-day meeting. About 15:00 UTC (16:00 CET): Osmosis plans its v32 network upgrade, per its governance proposal.
Wed 28 Oct, 14:00 UTC (15:00 CET): Strategy’s special meeting on its preferred stocks. 18:00 UTC (19:00 CET): Fed decision; Chair Warsh’s press conference at 18:30 UTC (19:30 CET). Alphabet and Microsoft report after the US close.
Thu 29 Oct, 12:30 UTC (13:30 CET): US third-quarter GDP advance estimate and September PCE. The ECB decides, usually at 13:15 UTC (14:15 CET). Amazon, Strategy and Coinbase report after the US close.
Fri 30 Oct, 08:00 UTC (09:00 CET): Deribit monthly options expiry. The Bank of Japan also announces its decision.

As of 04:53 UTC (05:53 CET), bitcoin was trading near $79,530 on Kraken and ether near $2,307. This is market commentary, not financial advice.

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