Key points
- Bitcoin traded near $76,810 on Kraken at 20:50 UTC, down about 8.1% from its 1 Oct open of $83,565 and down 1.3% on the day.
- The level that matters is $84,250, about $7,440 above the price.
- A daily close back above $78,670, Friday’s high, would turn the week’s low into a floor; hourly closes below $76,230, the 18 Sep low, would put prices back where they were in mid-September.
October usually pays. This one is about to send the bill.
With a day to go, bitcoin is down about 8.1% for the month on Kraken. On Bitstamp’s daily data, the only worse October was 2014’s 13.2% fall; 2018 (minus 4.5%) and 2025 (minus 4.0%) were the next-worst, and the other nine Octobers since 2015 rose.
Cointelegraph, citing CoinGlass, puts the month at minus 7.7%, also the worst since 2014.
What drove the session
The Nasdaq Composite fell 2.86% to 25,437, the S&P 500 lost 1.82% to 7,580 and the Dow 1.09% to 51,770, according to Yahoo Finance data at 20:48 UTC. Intel dropped 28.6%; on Thursday it had warned of weaker fourth-quarter sales than markets expected, Cointelegraph reported.
Gold futures fell 3.6% to $3,885 an ounce.
Crypto stocks took the Binance hack harder than bitcoin did. Coinbase closed down 10.6% at $143.54, after touching $136.90; it was down 13% at midday, as we reported in Coinbase’s fall and the analysts’ new targets. Circle fell 9.3%, Strategy 7.8%, Robinhood 7.2% and BlackRock’s bitcoin fund IBIT 5.1%.
Bitcoin’s worst hour came after the bell had stopped mattering much. In the 18:00 UTC hour it fell to $76,155.5, its lowest since 17 Sep and about $75 below the 18 Sep low, then bounced to close the hour at $76,500. Ether ended near $2,236, down 0.6% on the day; Solana near $94.86, down 0.6%; XRP near $1.247, up 1.0%.
Put simply: until Wednesday night the month was a mild loss. Bitcoin closed 28 Oct at $81,287, only 2.7% below its 1 Oct open; then Binance lost about $6.3 billion, and two days did the work of four weeks. October walked in like a guest bringing wine and is leaving with the cutlery.
Derivatives
Open interest on Deribit’s bitcoin perpetual was about $710.6 million at 20:50 UTC, up from $699.5 million at 14:54 UTC. Funding was close to zero, at about 0.0014% per eight hours, so neither side is paying much to hold its bet. Deribit’s DVOL index, a gauge of expected 30-day volatility, was near 41, from about 40.2 in the afternoon.
The levels
The level to watch is $84,250, about 9.7% above the price; bitcoin has not closed an hour above it since 21 Oct.
Below, the 18 Sep low of $76,231 was broken by an intraday wick but not by an hourly close; the 17 Sep low of $75,936.5 is next.
October’s monthly candle closes at 00:00 UTC on Sunday, 1 Nov (01:00 CET). Binance said on Friday it aims to begin resuming withdrawals within about 34 hours, subject to security checks, which would be early Sunday UTC.
The other read: the damage is concentrated in one event, not spread across the month. Funding is flat, and Deribit perpetual open interest is about 5% below the $747 million of Thursday morning, so there is less leverage left to be forced out. If Binance withdrawals restart on schedule, that weight may lift; a possibility, not a forecast.
This afternoon’s view is in our Market Read from the US open.
As of 20:50 UTC, BTC is trading near $76,810.
This article is for information only and is not investment advice.