Key points
- Bitcoin jumped above $84,250 on Kraken in the 14:00 UTC hour, reached $84,840 in the 16:00 UTC hour, its highest since 7 Oct, and ended the US session near $84,500.
- The level that capped the day was $84,840; every hourly close from 14:00 to 19:00 UTC held above $84,250.
- A sustained drop back below $84,250 would put the session lows near $84,110 and then $83,400 back in play.
Tuesday’s spike faded. Wednesday’s stuck.
Bitcoin traded near $84,495 on Kraken at about 20:08 UTC, up 1.9% from its UTC open of $82,936 and about 0.4% under the session high. Coinbase showed $84,476 with a 24-hour range of $82,535 to $84,856.
From Tuesday’s US close near $82,424, bitcoin was up about 2.5%. Ether was near $2,491, up 1.8% on the UTC day.
What drove the session
Tech led. Yahoo Finance data at the close showed the Nasdaq Composite up about 1.1% at 26,703, the S&P 500 up 0.6% at 7,757 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average up 0.7% at 52,856. The VIX fell to about 16.6 from 17.3.
The spark came the night before. SpaceX reported third-quarter revenue of $14.6 billion after Tuesday’s close, up 161% on a year earlier and nearly 15% above expectations, Cointelegraph reported, citing analysts at Truist who said the results helped calm worries about AI spending. Tesla’s results followed after Wednesday’s close; for Tesla’s bitcoin, see the SpaceX-Tesla merger story.
Bitcoin had a head start. It climbed from an Asia low near $82,543, which Wednesday’s First Print tracked, to about $83,725 by the end of the 13:00 UTC hour.
Then the 14:00 UTC hour traded about 434 BTC on Kraken, about two and a half times the hour before, and took the price to $84,654. Short liquidations across crypto markets came close to $110 million over four hours, Cointelegraph reported, citing CoinGlass data.
Put simply, traders who had bet on a fall were forced to buy back, and that added fuel to the move; what a liquidation is explains the mechanics.
The difference from Tuesday was what came next. The price did not slide back. The afternoon low was about $84,110 in the 19:00 UTC hour, still within sight of the line.
It was a door that opened but did not swing wide.
Crypto stocks did better than the coin again. Strategy shares rose about 7.5% and Coinbase’s about 3.6%, while BlackRock’s IBIT added 2.4%. The US 10-year Treasury yield rose about 3 basis points to near 5.15%, and Brent crude ended near $109.6 a barrel, up about 0.7%.
Derivatives
The rally was not built on new leverage. Deribit’s bitcoin perpetual open interest was about $851 million near 20:08 UTC, down from about $864 million at Tuesday’s close. Funding was 0.0005% per eight hours on Deribit, close to flat, and 0.001% on OKX, after OKX’s last settlement at 0.0034%.
Implied volatility barely moved. Deribit’s DVOL index was about 37.1 in the 20:00 UTC hour, against about 37.6 in the 15:00 UTC hour. Options traders did not price a bumpier month on the break.
Friday’s weekly book carried about 15,115 BTC of open interest at our read, with puts outnumbering calls about 1.05 to one, slightly less put-heavy than on Tuesday. The $78,000 put is still the largest strike at about 2,038 BTC, then the $80,000 put at about 887 BTC and the $90,000 call at about 823 BTC. The 30 October monthly, at about 137,100 BTC, leans to calls, with the $95,000 call the biggest line at about 20,037 BTC.
The levels
The level to watch is $84,250. Bitcoin has closed every hour above it since the US open, which Chain Signals had flagged as the lid earlier in the day; holding it through the Asian session would be the first sign this is more than one good afternoon.
Above, the session high at $84,840 is the first marker. Decrypt’s published view said a daily close above $84,726, the high when it wrote, would open about $86,090 and then the September high near $87,423, while a stall below would keep bitcoin inside a range of about $79,700 to $87,400.
Below, a sustained drop under $84,250 would bring the 19:00 UTC low near $84,110 and then the $83,400 area, where bitcoin spent the European morning, back into view.
The alternative read: open interest fell and funding sat near zero, so short-covering, not fresh buying with borrowed money, did much of the work. Rallies built that way can stall once the shorts are gone. The quiet DVOL says options traders are not convinced either way.
For Tuesday’s session, see Tuesday’s US-close Market Read.
As of 20:08 UTC, BTC is trading near $84,500.
This article is for information only and is not investment advice.