First Print 9 Nov: bitcoin's $73,444 low, 200-day holds

Key points

Bitcoin fell from about $75,500 to $73,444.3 on Kraken between 21:40 and 22:00 UTC on Sunday, its lowest price since 21 August. Coinbase printed a $73,477 low.
The drop stopped about $270 above bitcoin’s 200-day moving average, near $73,170 on Kraken daily closes. By 04:43 UTC it was back near $74,810 on Kraken and $74,800 on Coinbase.
CoinGlass counted more than $1 billion of liquidations over 24 hours, about $913 million of them longs, according to CoinDesk. Ether took the bigger hit.

Fifteen minutes. Two thousand dollars.

Saturday’s First Print described a market resting after a bad week. Sunday night showed what thin weekend books do with a resting market.

The quarter-hour that broke the floor

Kraken’s 21:40 UTC candle closed at $75,511.5. The next three five-minute candles went to $75,200, then $74,804.9, then $73,444.3.

The last of those candles traded about 313 BTC on Kraken. Half an hour earlier, five-minute candles were trading under 6 BTC.

That took out Friday’s $74,790 low and the week’s floor with it. The last lower daily low on Kraken was $73,001.1, on 21 August.

The bounce was nearly as fast. Bitcoin was back at $75,622.8 by 23:15 UTC, then gave some of it back through the Asian morning.

Sunday’s Kraken candle closed at $74,737.9. From Monday 2 Nov’s open of $78,239.2, the week cost about 4.5%.

Ether did the heavy lifting

Ether fell from about $2,224 to $2,071 on Kraken inside the 21:00 UTC hour, a drop of almost 7%. Coinbase’s low was $2,089.

It was near $2,136 at 04:43 UTC. That puts ETH/BTC near 0.0286, and ether is recovering more slowly than bitcoin.

The liquidation split says the same thing. CoinGlass data cited by CoinDesk show about $448 million of ether positions closed out, against about $272 million in bitcoin. The largest single liquidation, about $48 million, was an ether order.

Solana was near $87.28 and XRP near $1.103 on Kraken at our read.

Three stories, one candle

Everyone has an explanation. CoinDesk points to a weekend headline about Nvidia, whose board said it had opened an independent investigation involving its chief executive, and to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio saying talks with Iran had stalled.

Reuters points to fears that a Democratic-controlled Congress will toughen crypto rules after last week’s midterms.

All three may be in the price. None of them arrived in a single quarter of an hour.

What the candles show is timing. The flush came about an hour before CME’s bitcoin futures reopened at 23:00 UTC, and the strongest part of the rebound came in the 20 minutes after.

That is timing, not proof of cause.

Leverage came back in, not out

Deribit’s bitcoin perpetual open interest was about $698 million at 04:43 UTC, up from about $685 million on Saturday morning. The flush cleared longs, and fresh positions have already replaced them.

Funding stayed small: about 0.004% per eight hours on Deribit and 0.005% for OKX’s current period.

DVOL, Deribit’s 30-day implied-volatility index for bitcoin, peaked near 41.8 in the 21:00 UTC hour. By 04:00 UTC it was back near 40.

Put simply, a moving average is the average closing price over a set number of days, and the 200-day version is the line many traders treat as the long-term trend. Bitcoin touched within 0.4% of it and did not close below it.

A test that holds once can still fail the second time.

Keep leverage light into a week with two inflation prints.

Chart to watch

Kraken five-minute candles, Sunday 21:30 to Monday 00:30 UTC: a slide from about $75,500 to $73,444.3, a V back to $75,622.8 by 23:15, then a drift towards $74,800.
Below: the 200-day moving average near $73,170, then August’s $73,001.1. A daily close under both would put the trend line itself in question.
Above: $75,622.8, the bounce high, then $76,300.7, Friday’s high, and the 100-day average near $77,290. $84,250, the line this desk uses for the Brief mood, is about $9,400 away.

On the calendar (UTC / CET)

Mon 9 Nov, 13:40 UTC (14:40 CET): the Fed’s Michelle Bowman speaks. US stocks open at 14:30 UTC (15:30 CET), the first cash-market test of the weekend’s Nvidia news.
Tue 10 Nov, 13:30 UTC (14:30 CET): US October CPI.
Fri 13 Nov, 08:00 UTC (09:00 CET): Deribit weekly bitcoin options expiry. About 33,900 BTC of open interest sat on the 13NOV26 book at our read, roughly $2.5 billion at the index, with a put/call ratio of about 0.69.
Fri 13 Nov, 13:30 UTC (14:30 CET): US October PPI. The rest of the week is in this week’s calendar.

As of 04:43 UTC (05:43 CET), bitcoin was trading near $74,810 on Kraken and ether near $2,136.

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