Key points
- Bitcoin dipped to $80,567.9 on Kraken at about 20:15 UTC on Sunday, just under Saturday’s weekend low of $80,655.2, before steadying near $80,730. Ether, solana and XRP were all down about 2.5% on the UTC day.
- Fed policymakers are in their quiet period before the 27-28 Oct meeting, so the week’s dates come from elsewhere: China’s activity data on Monday, France’s budget vote on Tuesday, Solana’s Alpenglow switch on Wednesday and Japan’s inflation figures late on Thursday.
- Deribit shows 14,883 BTC of options expiring on Friday 23 Oct at 08:00 UTC (10:00 CEST), about $1.2 billion. Puts outnumber calls 1.25 to one, and the biggest strike, $78,000, is almost all puts.
Bitcoin has poked below its weekend low. The Fed has nothing to say about it this week.
The largest cryptocurrency traded near $80,733 on Kraken at 20:20 UTC (22:20 CEST), down 0.8% from the UTC-day open of $81,382 and 1.8% below Sunday’s high of $82,177.3.
The slide picked up after 19:15 UTC, following an afternoon spent between roughly $80,900 and $81,200, and the day’s low printed in the 20:15 UTC five-minute bar.
Ether did worse, falling 2.5% since midnight UTC to $2,340.6. Solana also lost about 2.5%, to $100.81, and XRP 2.6% to $1.259.
The weekend had already shown its nerves. On Saturday night, chip-stock perpetuals lost up to 7% in ten minutes before most of it came back, as we reported in Saturday’s chip-perp flash drop.
On Friday, the S&P 500 fell 1.09% to 7,659.44 and the Cboe VIX jumped about 21% to 19.99, by Yahoo Finance’s close data. US spot bitcoin funds lost a net $228.4 million in the week to 16 Oct, their second losing week in a row, according to our ETF Desk.
Derivatives look calmer than the screen. Deribit’s volatility index, DVOL, read 38.5 at 19:43 UTC, which implies a one-standard-deviation move of about 2.0% a day.
Perpetual funding was 0.0071% per eight hours on Deribit and 0.0047% on OKX’s current period at 20:20 UTC. Put simply, funding is the fee holders of perpetual futures pay each other to keep the contract near spot, and at these levels nobody is paying up to be long.
The bitcoin week ahead, day by day (UTC / CEST)
- Mon 19 Oct: China’s statistics bureau publishes its national economic performance figures for the first nine months, alongside September industrial output, retail sales and fixed-asset investment, at 10:00 Beijing time (02:00 UTC, 04:00 CEST), per its 2026 release calendar. CME Group’s Bitcoin Cash and Uniswap futures start with trade date Monday; see our report. Michael Saylor posted a Strategy holdings chart on Sunday with the line “We found room for more orange.” No purchase has been filed. Strategy’s last disclosed buy, reported on 13 Oct, took its holdings to 848,250 BTC.
- Tue 20 Oct: China’s bureau follows with its preliminary accounting of quarterly value added by industry at 09:30 Beijing time (01:30 UTC, 03:30 CEST). France’s National Assembly holds its solemn vote on the revenue half of the 2027 budget, which now includes the tax on crypto-to-stablecoin swaps, after Questions to the Government, usually from 13:00 UTC (15:00 CEST); see our report on the 38-37 vote. Comments close on the SEC’s Regulation Crypto Assets proposal.
- Wed 21 Oct: Solana’s Alpenglow consensus upgrade activates with epoch 1064, which starts at about 15:00 UTC (17:00 CEST), according to the Solana Foundation. The network keeps running TowerBFT for the first 5,000 slots, about 18 minutes, and Alpenglow takes over at slot 459,653,000. Validators must run an Agave-based client, because Firedancer is not supported during the migration. Our Alpenglow explainer covers the 150-millisecond finality target.
- Thu 22 Oct: Starknet’s non-binding Snapshot poll on researching an independent post-quantum layer 1 closes at 09:32 UTC (11:32 CEST); see Chain Check. Japan’s national consumer price index for September is due on Friday 23 Oct, per the Statistics Bureau’s schedule, at 08:30 Tokyo time, which is 23:30 UTC on Thursday (01:30 CEST Friday).
- Fri 23 Oct: Deribit’s weekly options expire at 08:00 UTC (10:00 CEST).
The US slate is thin. The Bureau of Labor Statistics lists only state employment figures on Tuesday and usual weekly earnings on Wednesday, both at 10:00 Eastern (14:00 UTC), and the Fed Board’s October calendar shows no appearances after Chair Kevin Warsh’s Bangkok fireside chat on 16 Oct. We are not quoting consensus forecasts for the China or Japan figures, because published ones differ.
Friday’s expiry, strike by strike
Of the 14,883 BTC expiring on Friday, 8,262 are puts and 6,620 are calls. At Deribit’s index price of $80,767 at 19:43 UTC, that is about $1.2 billion by our arithmetic, one contract being 1 BTC.
A put pays if bitcoin finishes below its strike, the price written into the contract. A call pays if it finishes above. Open interest is how many contracts are still outstanding.
The puts bunch below the market. Puts at or below $80,000 hold 6,589 BTC, 44% of all open interest in this expiry and 80% of the puts.
By total size, the top five strikes are $78,000 (1,997 BTC, of which 1,994 puts), $82,000 (1,190 BTC, split 574 puts and 616 calls), $70,000 (1,125 BTC, almost all puts), $83,000 (1,089 BTC, 572 puts and 517 calls) and $80,000 (1,031 BTC, of which 939 puts). Calls at $85,000 and above total 4,786 BTC.
Open interest counts contracts, not intent. A put can be a hedge on a long position as easily as a bearish bet, and the data does not say which. What it does show is where payouts would start if bitcoin finished the week at those prices.
Our max-pain strike for the expiry is $82,000, about 1.5% above Sunday evening’s index price. Max pain is the strike at which option holders as a group would collect the least if every contract were held to expiry. We calculate it from Deribit’s open interest. It is a convention, not a force.
The level to watch is the weekend low of $80,655.2, which bitcoin dipped under at about 20:15 UTC without holding below it. A sustained break would bring the 15 Oct low of $79,709 back into view, and the $78,000 put stack sits below that. Above, the line that matters for our market mood is still $84,250, the 12 Oct high, which bitcoin has not reclaimed since.
A different reading
Friday is a small expiry. It holds 3.8% of the 390,100 BTC of option open interest on Deribit. The monthly expiry on 30 Oct holds 149,683 BTC, 38.4% of the total and about ten times Friday’s size. A $78,000 stack that looks heavy this week may matter far less than the month-end book, which settles two days after the Fed decides. Thin weekend books can also turn quickly, as Saturday’s chip-perp episode showed when most of the drop came back within hours. For what happens to leverage when price gaps, see what a liquidation is.
Not on the calendar
- Treasury and Iran-linked crypto: Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on 9 Oct that the US would “probably” seize about $1 billion in Iran-linked crypto that week. We had seen no Treasury announcement of a completed seizure as of Sunday evening; see our report.
- Cysic’s bridge: the project suspended its cross-chain bridge after 10 million CYS were minted without authorisation on 17 Oct. It says the bridge stays shut until a security review is done and that it will publish a follow-up report on verified losses. It has given no date.
Just beyond the week
- Sun 25 Oct: Europe’s clocks go back an hour. US clocks follow on 1 Nov.
- Mon 26 Oct: the Hoodi testnet run of Ethereum’s Glamsterdam upgrade, per the call notes we reported.
- Wed 28 Oct, 14:00 UTC (15:00 CET): Strategy’s special meeting, a webcast vote on amending its four preferred stocks (STRF, STRC, STRK and STRD) to pay daily dividends, per its 5 Oct proxy statement.
- Wed 28 Oct, 18:00 UTC (19:00 CET): the FOMC decision, after a two-day meeting from 27 Oct. The Bank of Japan meets on 29 and 30 Oct.
- Fri 30 Oct: Deribit’s monthly expiry, the 149,683 BTC book above.
Set your alarms by Asia’s clock this week.
As of 20:20 UTC (22:20 CEST), bitcoin was trading near $80,733 on Kraken.
Related: Monday's First Print, after China's data
This article is for information only and is not investment advice.