Key points
- Bitcoin closed Thursday at $77,800.0 on Kraken, down 4.3% on the day and its lowest close since 17 Sep, after Binance was drained in what it says is a roughly $6.3 billion hack.
- It touched $76,330.1 in the 02:00 UTC hour, the lowest since 18 Sep, then climbed back to about $78,190.
- The map: $78,000, the strike where Friday’s expiring options pay holders least, then $78,260.4 overhead; $76,330.1 below.
The hack was the headline. The tape took it in two stages.
Bitcoin traded near $78,189 on Kraken at 04:47 UTC (05:47 CET), about 0.5% above its UTC open of $77,800.0. Coinbase showed $78,184. Ether was near $2,242 after a low of $2,170, with solana near $97.15 and XRP near $1.250.
Two legs down, one leg up
The first leg came fast. Bitcoin dropped from $80,744.5 to $78,200.0 in the 20:00 UTC hour on Thursday, on 623.6 BTC of Kraken volume, the busiest hour of the day.
That is the same hour the first large transfer left a Binance hot wallet, at 20:24 UTC, according to Etherscan records cited in our Security Alert on the Binance hack. It also explains the drop last night’s Market Read could not yet pin down.
The second leg came in Asia. Bitcoin slid through midnight UTC and traded 601.9 BTC in the 00:00 UTC hour, before printing $76,330.1 in the 02:00 UTC hour.
Then the selling ran dry. On Coinbase, bitcoin bottomed at $76,301 in the 02:00 UTC quarter-hour and was back above $77,300 by 02:45 UTC. Kraken’s public candles show no price change from 02:30 to 03:00 UTC, so Coinbase is the better guide for that stretch.
In between, at 02:25 UTC, Binance put the damage at about $6.3 billion, said about $3 billion was frozen and promised to cover losses. Kraken’s 03:00 UTC hour closed at $78,052.1.
That is timing, not proof. But the bounce came as the uncertainty shrank.
BNB, Binance’s own token, was near $716, down 4.8% over 24 hours, CoinGecko data show. Bitcoin’s share of the crypto market held at 59.3%.
The leverage cleared
Crypto futures liquidations topped $1.5 billion in rolling 24-hour counts taken late on Thursday, TokenPost reported.
Deribit’s bitcoin perpetual open interest slipped to about $724 million, from about $747 million on Thursday morning. Funding stayed positive: 0.013% per eight hours on Deribit, and 0.01% on OKX.
Deribit’s DVOL index peaked at 41.99 in the 23:00 UTC hour and was back to 38.26 by 04:00 UTC, against 36.83 a day earlier.
Put simply, DVOL is the price of 30-day insurance on bitcoin. Traders paid up overnight, then stopped.
The 08:00 UTC magnet
Friday’s month-end expiry is large. Deribit showed 134,389 BTC of bitcoin options expiring at 08:00 UTC (09:00 CET), about $10.5 billion at the index price, by our read of its public data at 04:46 UTC.
Calls outnumber puts almost two to one, but the biggest stack, about 19,951 BTC, sits at $95,000. That is far out of reach.
The strike at which these options pay their holders least is $78,000, by our count, a few hundred dollars under the market.
The Bank of Japan added little. It held its policy rate at about 1.25% in an 8-1 vote, with one member wanting 1.5%, its statement shows.
Mind the expiry, then the withdrawals.
Chart to watch
- Kraken’s daily closes: $81,287.1 on Wednesday, $77,800.0 on Thursday. A close back above $78,759.2, the end of the 20:00 UTC hour, would put bitcoin back where it stood once the first leg was done.
- Overhead: $78,260.4, Friday’s high so far, then $80,744.5, where bitcoin stood before the drain began, then $84,250, which it has not held on an hourly close since 21 Oct.
- Below: $76,330.1, the overnight low, then $76,231.0, the 18 Sep low. A sustained break would put bitcoin at its lowest since mid-September.
On the calendar (UTC / CET)
- Fri 30 Oct, 08:00 UTC (09:00 CET): Deribit monthly options expiry. Eurostat’s preliminary flash estimate of euro-area third-quarter GDP is also due on Friday. Brazil’s deadline for crypto firms to apply for authorisation falls today, and Coinbase converts European retail users’ non-MiCA stablecoins, mostly into USDC, per our week-ahead calendar.
- By Sun 1 Nov: Binance says withdrawals should start to resume within 48 hours of its 04:36 UTC update on Friday.
- Mon 2 Nov, 05:00 UTC (06:00 CET): the Bank of Japan publishes the full text of its Outlook Report.
For Thursday’s set-up, see Thursday’s First Print.
As of 04:47 UTC (05:47 CET), bitcoin was trading near $78,189 on Kraken and ether near $2,242. This is market commentary, not financial advice.
This article is for information only and is not investment advice.