Bitcoin slips back to $82,700 after three tries at $84,800, as Tesla and Lam Research drag Asian chip stocks

Bitcoin gave back most of Wednesday’s climb during the Asian session on Thursday 22 October. After topping out at $84,856.07 on Coinbase in the 16:00 UTC hour on Wednesday, it fell to $82,589.65 in the quarter-hour from 03:30 UTC and the bitcoin price stood at $82,750 at 04:50 UTC, according to Coindaro’s market data. The slide followed a turn in US tech stocks after the close: Tesla cut its capital-spending outlook, Lam Research fell about 7% despite beating forecasts, and Nasdaq 100 futures dropped about 1% as chip stocks in Seoul, Tokyo and Hong Kong sold off.

From the Coinbase high to the 04:50 UTC level, the bitcoin price lost about $2,100, or 2.5%. That leaves it almost exactly where it stood 24 hours earlier: at 05:00 UTC on Wednesday, Coinbase traded at $82,716.26. No source we read points to a crypto-specific trigger. The move tracked equity futures up, then down.

Wednesday’s rally through $84,000, and the roughly $188 million of short positions it forced shut, are in our analysis of Wednesday’s US session. This piece picks up after the New York close, when the tech trade that had lifted bitcoin went into reverse.

Bitcoin price today, hour by hour: three tries at $84,800, then a slide in Asia

Coinbase’s public candle data show a market that pushed at the same ceiling three times on Wednesday and failed each time. The high of $84,856.07 came in the 16:00 UTC hour. The 18:00 UTC hour reached $84,826.38, and the 20:00 UTC hour, when the US stock market closes, $84,814.88. Other venues printed slightly different tops: Bitcoin.com News gave $84,807 on Wednesday afternoon and Journal du Coin a weekly high of $84,700, while CoinDesk put the peak near $84,800. None of them gives an exact time.

Between 21:00 and 22:00 UTC the price held between $84,578 and $84,780. Then it started to leak. Tesla’s shares, which had risen right after its results, were down more than 2% at 6:09 p.m. New York time (22:09 UTC), after the company lowered its spending outlook late in its earnings call, Seoul Economic Daily reported. By midnight UTC bitcoin was at $84,024.67.

The heavier selling came with the opening of Asian markets. In the quarter-hour from 01:30 UTC, when Hong Kong and mainland China start trading, bitcoin dropped from $84,280.51 to a low of $83,469.82 on about 130 BTC of Coinbase volume, roughly ten times what the previous quarter-hour had traded. A second leg in the quarter-hour from 02:15 UTC took it to $82,705.05 on about 190 BTC, the busiest 15 minutes of the night.

For readers in the euro area, $82,750 was about €73,710 at 04:50 UTC, at the exchange rate Coindaro’s market data used. The Crypto Fear and Greed Index read 68, in the greed zone, on Coindaro’s 04:37 UTC snapshot.

Why is bitcoin down today? Tesla’s capex cut, Lam’s slide and Nasdaq futures

Three large US companies reported after Wednesday’s close. Investors have spent weeks asking whether the money poured into artificial intelligence will pay off, and the three reports gave them mixed answers.

Tesla’s quarter beat estimates: revenue of $28.05 billion and adjusted earnings of 48 cents a share, against the 43 cents Seoul Economic Daily cited as the consensus. Its third-quarter capital spending was $4.73 billion, Electrek reported from the company’s letter, which kept the 2026 target at more than $25 billion. Then, late in the call, management cut that full-year target to about $20 billion, according to Seoul Economic Daily and Stocktwits. Investing.com put Tesla’s after-hours fall at 3.3%; CoinDesk said 3%.

Lam Research, which sells equipment to chipmakers, did better than forecast. Its September-quarter revenue reached $8.22 billion, and it guided to $8.60 billion, plus or minus $400 million, for the December quarter, its results release shows. That midpoint sat slightly above the $8.54 billion analysts expected, Investing.com reported. The shares still fell: 6% shortly after the release, and 7.4% by the time Investing.com’s Asia report was written. Investing.com blamed the width of the range and profit-taking after a rise of nearly 80% in a year.

Meta went the other way. Its third-quarter revenue rose 26% to $64.6 billion, above the $63.3 billion analysts expected, Fortune reported, and it raised the bottom of its 2026 spending range, now $135 billion to $145 billion against $130 billion to $145 billion before. Its shares rose 2.2% after hours, per Investing.com. That did not stop the futures from sliding: Nasdaq 100 futures were down 1.2% and S&P 500 futures 0.6% in Asian trade, according to Investing.com’s Asia market report, while CoinDesk had 1.1% and 0.5%.

The day before, the tape had looked very different. US stocks rose on Wednesday, with SpaceX’s results lifting the Nasdaq, and Tesla gained about 3.4% in the regular session, on the day reports emerged of the possible SpaceX and Tesla merger that would pool 30,221 BTC. The capex cut after hours gave that story a second, less friendly layer.

Asia sold its chipmakers

South Korea took the hardest hit among the large markets. The Kospi was down 2.1% in Thursday’s session, according to Investing.com’s report, timed at about 04:00 UTC, a day after it closed up 3.3% at 5,735.66, as AP reported. SK Hynix fell 4% and Samsung Electronics 3.6%. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng lost 2.7%, Japan’s Nikkei 225 1.1% and China’s CSI 300 1.6%, which left the CSI 300 about 20% below its June peak, at the edge of a technical bear market.

These are intraday figures, and they will change by the close. The quote boxes on the same Investing.com page, which carry no time, already showed the Nikkei down about 2.1% and Hong Kong futures down about 3%. Alibaba’s drop had a local cause as well: Beijing called for tighter quality control at e-commerce companies. The Bank of Korea left its rate unchanged after two consecutive hikes.

Oil added to the pressure. Brent rose 1.5% to above $110 a barrel after deadly attacks in Saudi Arabia, Investing.com reported. Dearer energy feeds inflation, the worry behind the Fed’s rate hike in September.

What crypto did: majors drift lower, Zcash holds up

The rest of the large-cap market followed bitcoin down, without drama. Ether traded at $2,440 at 04:50 UTC on Coindaro’s market data, after reaching $2,524.38 on Coinbase during Wednesday’s rally. Solana stood at $105.2, XRP at $1.34 and BNB at $739.5 at the same time.

CoinDesk’s survey of the majors, written at 03:51 UTC, found Zcash the only notable gainer, up nearly 3% to about $1,290. Hyperliquid’s HYPE was the weakest of the big names, down 3% to about $79, and Dogecoin lost 2%.

Further down the list, the biggest moves were in thin tokens and should be read with care. Akedo’s AKE was down 36% over 24 hours at 04:50 UTC on Coindaro’s market data, after an unlock of tokens worth about $63 million that KuCoin News’ weekly calendar had scheduled for 00:00 UTC on Wednesday. Nobody has tied the two in a statement; the fall simply followed the unlock. The top gainers on the same screen were micro-caps such as Hood Sword Inu, whose prices can reverse within hours.

Bitcoin ETF flows: Wednesday’s figure is not published yet

The question left open by Wednesday’s rally was whether US spot bitcoin ETFs bought into it. At 04:55 UTC on Thursday, the answer was still not on the record. TFTC’s ETF flow tracker showed data up to 20 October only, and both Farside Investors and SoSoValue blocked our requests.

What is known: the funds took in a net $526.6 million on Monday 19 October, led by $665.2 million for BlackRock’s IBIT, and $23.16 million on Tuesday, according to SoSoValue data reported by Cointribune. Even after those two days, October was still a net outflow of $67.4 million through 20 October, TFTC’s tally shows, with IBIT up $884.3 million for the month and Fidelity’s FBTC down $552.1 million. US spot ether ETFs recorded a fifth straight day of outflows on Tuesday, losing $26.13 million.

Journal du Coin, citing Farside, reported partial figures for Wednesday showing about $60 million of inflows: $32.6 million into Grayscale’s funds and $19.2 million into Bitwise’s, before BlackRock and Fidelity had reported. We could not see that table ourselves, so treat it as provisional. If it holds, it is small next to Monday’s $526.6 million, and it does not change the reading of Wednesday’s move as mostly forced buying by short sellers.

Listed bitcoin holders rode the rally harder than the coin. Strategy’s shares rose more than 7% to $153.48 and Strive’s more than 13% to $30.75 on Wednesday, Bitcoin.com News reported. How much of that survives Thursday’s US session, which opens at 13:30 UTC, is unknown.

Liquidations and the levels traders watch: $82,500, then $80,000

Leverage worked in both directions. Journal du Coin, citing CoinDesk, counted about $284 million of crypto liquidations, with futures volume up 19% in 24 hours to about $190 billion; it did not give the period for the liquidations or split them between long and short positions. Wednesday’s upside leg was the mirror image: the short squeeze that carried bitcoin through $84,000.

CoinDesk named $82,500 as the support to watch, a level bitcoin brushed at 03:30 UTC without closing below it. Below that, the reference points come from on-chain analysts. Glassnode’s Week 41 report, as summarised by Cointribune, puts the average cost basis of US spot ETF holders near $81,500, just above the psychological $80,000 mark, and places resistance near $87,700, the cost basis of holders who bought six to twelve months ago. Cointribune’s summary gives other figures for that cohort elsewhere in the text, so the $87,700 level is the less certain of the two.

The $80,000 mark has already been tested this month. Bitcoin dipped briefly below it in mid-October, and on Wednesday morning in Asia it was at $82,700, stuck under $83,000. The past 24 hours took it from there to within $144 of $85,000 and back again.

Why a tech-futures slide moves bitcoin

Bitcoin has no earnings and no capex plan, so a carmaker’s spending forecast should not matter to it. It does because many of the same funds and traders hold both. When Nasdaq futures fall in thin overnight trade, risk is cut across the board, and bitcoin, which trades around the clock, is often the first liquid asset sold. The link is not constant. It held on Wednesday, when bitcoin rose with chip stocks, and again overnight, when it fell with them.

Thursday’s agenda: jobless claims, Turkey’s rate call and a Fed six days away

Scheduled macro news is thin, and no Federal Reserve official will speak: the Fed’s pre-meeting blackout began on 17 October and ends on 29 October, as noted in our crypto week ahead.

The claims forecast dates from 19 October and may have moved since. With the Fed silent, this release and the companies’ regular-session trading are what rate and tech traders have to go on today.

The bigger date is 28 October. The Fed raised its target range by a quarter point to 3.75% to 4.00% on 16 September, by a 12 to 0 vote, according to its FOMC statement. Markets price a second hike next week as the less likely outcome. On Tuesday 20 October, prediction markets put the chance of a hike at 12% to 13% and of no change at 84% to 88%, Cryptoticker reported without naming the market. We have no fresher figure.

What we do not know yet

Several pieces are missing from the picture at 05:00 UTC, and each could change the reading of the night.

• Wednesday’s ETF flow. Farside and SoSoValue usually post the US figures during the European morning; only a partial, unconfirmed estimate of about $60 million exists so far.
• The split of the liquidations. The $284 million total has no long and short breakdown, so it is unclear how much of the overnight fall was forced selling.
• Asia’s closes. The index moves quoted here are intraday and will be revised by the end of the session.
• Tesla’s and Meta’s regular-session moves, which start at 13:30 UTC, and with them the direction of Nasdaq futures for the rest of the day.
• A crypto cause. None of the sources we read names one; on the evidence so far, the reversal was an equity-futures move that bitcoin followed.

For readers in France and Italy, there is no regulatory news behind this move: no AMF, Consob or OAM announcement touched it. The euro price, about €73,710 at 04:50 UTC, moved with the dollar price. The next marker is the 12:30 UTC jobless claims release, then Wall Street’s open an hour later.