Bitcoin lost 4.5% on Coinbase between Wall Street’s close on Thursday (20:00 UTC) and its open on Friday (13:30 UTC), then went nowhere. That order of events is the best clue we have to the bitcoin price today, around $77,170 at 17:45 UTC on Friday 30 October. From the opening bell to that moment the coin moved 0.1%, while the Nasdaq Composite stood 3.06% below Thursday’s close, according to Yahoo Finance data. Coinbase shares were down 13.67% at the same time, about three times the coin’s fall since Thursday’s close.
The timing suggests the Binance hack weighed on bitcoin more than Friday’s tech rout did. It does not prove it. Candles show when a price moved, not why, and for part of Thursday evening the theft and a run of bad tech earnings were happening at once. What the data does show is that the sharpest fall came while a Nasdaq fund was steady, and that the Friday session itself left almost no mark on the coin.
Two things are missing as this is written. The US session runs until 20:00 UTC (the US stays on daylight time until Sunday), so every index and stock figure below is an intraday print with its time. And spot ETF flows for Friday are not out.
Where the bitcoin price today was lost: 20:40 UTC on Thursday, with the cash session over
TRM Labs dates the first transfers out of Binance’s hot wallets to 20:05 UTC on Thursday, five minutes after the bell, in the theft we covered in our main report on the Binance hack. Binance estimates the impact at about $6.3 billion.
Bitcoin’s first move came before that transfer. It fell from $80,743 at 20:00 UTC to about $80,318 by 20:05 UTC and touched $80,015 at 20:06 UTC. Intel had said in its notice of 6 October that it would report “promptly after close of market” on 29 October, and Amazon reported the same evening. Yahoo Finance minute data has Intel dropping from $92.39 to $80.86 in the 20:01 UTC minute and the Invesco QQQ, the big Nasdaq 100 fund, losing 1.5% by 20:06 UTC. After-hours trading is thin, so these prints are rough. Still, those first minutes look more like earnings than like the hack.
Then the two stories separate. TRM puts the largest sweep, the hot wallet it calls Binance 14, at 20:23 to 20:24 UTC. Bitcoin went under $80,000 in the five minutes from 20:30 UTC. The candle from 20:40 UTC traded 399 BTC on Coinbase, against 30 to 79 BTC in each of the eight candles before it, and by 20:50 UTC the low was $78,177. The QQQ, meanwhile, had steadied and stood near $708 at 20:40 UTC, a little above its 20:06 UTC level. That gap is the strongest piece of evidence in this analysis, and it covers only an hour.
CoinDesk’s Daybook reports that the first big trade on Paradigm, 250 BTC of $78,000 puts, printed at 20:38 UTC, before the hack was public. That timing comes from Paradigm’s own desk, and we have seen no allegation of anything improper. It does show options and spot moving within minutes of each other.
The low came at $76,301 on Coinbase during the 02:00 UTC hour on Friday. CoinGlass data quoted by CoinDesk at 06:22 UTC counted $1.53 billion of liquidations over 24 hours, 83.8% of them longs and 49.2% on Binance itself. By then the forced selling had stopped: in the final hour, about 95% of the $21.6 million liquidated were shorts, and bitcoin reached $78,635 in the 06:00 UTC hour.
| Window (UTC, Coinbase) | From | To | Move | What was happening |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Thu 20:00 to 20:30 | $80,743 | $80,302 | -0.5% | Intel and Amazon report; QQQ falls after hours; theft begins at 20:05, per TRM |
| Thu 20:30 to Fri 02:00 hour low | $80,302 | $76,301 | -5.0% | Slide, liquidations, Binance suspends withdrawals |
| Low to the 06:00 hour high | $76,301 | $78,635 | +3.1% | Shorts liquidated in Asian hours |
| 06:00 hour high to Fri 13:30 | $78,635 | $77,119 | -1.9% | Tech falls in Asia and US pre-market; options expiry at 08:00 |
| Fri 13:30 to 17:45 | $77,119 | $77,175 | +0.1% | Nasdaq down 2.5% to about 3% |
The Nasdaq fell 3% and bitcoin ended the stretch where it began
At 17:45 UTC, with more than two hours of trading left, Yahoo Finance data had the Nasdaq Composite at 25,383.75 (-3.06%), the S&P 500 at 7,577.85 (-1.85%) and the Dow at 51,849.09 (-0.94%), all against Thursday’s closing levels. The Nasdaq’s low so far was -3.33% at 17:55 UTC. Intel stood at $64.32, down 30.14% from its $92.07 Thursday close, after a third-quarter report with a fourth-quarter revenue forecast of $15 billion to $16 billion, weaker than the market wanted. Nvidia was off 4.83% and Amazon 1.76%. At 16:10 UTC, CoinDesk’s live blog had the Goldman Sachs Broad AI US Index down 4.7%, about 22% below its late-June peak.
Bitcoin did flinch. It dropped from $77,119 at the open to $76,409 at 13:52 UTC, 0.9% in 22 minutes, about what a coin tied to tech stocks would do. Then it stopped following. It climbed to $77,958 in the quarter hour from 15:15 UTC, with the Nasdaq still more than 2% lower, and at 17:45 UTC it sat at about $77,175, $55 above where the session started.
There are two ways to read that calm, and they lead to different places. In the first, bitcoin had already paid: the hack did the repricing and there was little left for stocks to take away. In the second, nobody was left to be forced out. The leverage had gone on Thursday night, so a stock rout that might have set off liquidations found little to liquidate. Both fit the data, and neither shows bitcoin has stopped following tech. One afternoon cannot show that.
Tech can still claim part of the 4.5 points
The fair objection is that the rout started long before 13:30 UTC. Alphabet had already lost more than 12% on Thursday. Intel and Amazon then reported, and the QQQ was down more than 2% in pre-market trading by 08:36 UTC, per CoinDesk. Korea’s Kospi and Japan’s Nikkei fell 3.5% and 2.1% in the Korea Times report. So bitcoin could have priced some of the Nasdaq’s fall before the Nasdaq opened.
The candles split the 4.5% into three stretches. About 0.5 points went by 20:30 UTC, when earnings and the first transfers overlapped. About 2.1 went between 20:30 UTC and the 06:00 UTC high, the stretch that held the 5.0% drop and the 3.1% bounce. About 1.9 went from that high to the US open, when tech is an obvious suspect but hack news was still running and a large options expiry settled at 08:00 UTC.
On the net count, then, tech could account for up to about 2.4 of the 4.5 points if every bit of the first and third stretches were its doing, and probably less. The hack’s case rests on the size and timing of the middle stretch: the deepest fall of the night, in the hours when the theft was unfolding, with the QQQ flat at the moment the heaviest trading hit. We read the hack as the larger force. An hourly comparison cannot settle the split.
Gold fell with stocks, which matters for the macro story. It traded as low as $3,891 an ounce on Friday, its weakest in a year, Cointelegraph reported without giving a time, after $3,970 at 12:18 UTC on the CoinDesk live blog. Assets falling together with no haven bid can be a sign of selling for liquidity. Bitcoin sitting still inside that picture is the odd part.
Rates and data do not explain Friday
September’s PCE inflation came out on Thursday 29 October, not Friday, though several summaries have it wrong. The Bureau of Economic Analysis reported the headline index up 0.5% on the month and 3.6% over a year, and core PCE up 0.3% on the month and 3.1% over a year. Bitcoin rose after that release, to a high of $81,890 in the 16:00 UTC hour on Thursday, so it is a poor candidate for the fall.
Friday’s release was the third-quarter Employment Cost Index, at 12:30 UTC. The Bureau of Labor Statistics showed compensation for civilian workers up 0.8% over three months and 3.4% over 12. We found no consensus estimate, so we will not call it a beat or a miss. Bitcoin stayed inside a $323 range during that hour.
Rates moved the wrong way for a macro scare. The 10-year Treasury yield was 4.90% at 11:49 UTC, per CoinDesk, and 4.95% at 15:48 UTC, per the Korea Times, against 4.98% late Thursday. December rate-hike odds slipped to about 70% from nearly 90% on Wednesday. Falling yields and falling hike odds during a stock drop point to a sell-off tied to AI spending, not a rates shock. The equal-weighted S&P 500 was up 1.2% at 16:10 UTC while the cap-weighted index fell 1.65%, which looks like rotation out of the biggest names. A JPMorgan note cited by Cointelegraph said the “Equity rotation is likely to continue today”.
Why crypto stocks fell harder than the coin
The headline comparison flatters bitcoin. Set Coinbase at -13.67% against a flat bitcoin session and the gap looks enormous. But a stock’s Friday change is measured from its last close, at 20:00 UTC on Thursday, before the theft began. The fair yardstick is bitcoin’s fall over the same stretch, 4.4% at 17:45 UTC. Bitcoin trades all night and took the news in instalments. The stocks took it in one gap.
| Asset | Thursday close | About 13:35 UTC | 17:45 UTC |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coinbase (COIN) | $160.59 | $141.35 (-11.98%) | $138.65 (-13.67%) |
| Strategy (MSTR) | $141.62 | $125.56 (-11.34%) | $129.55 (-8.52%) |
| Circle (CRCL) | $79.99 | $72.39 (-9.51%) | $71.71 (-10.35%) |
| Robinhood (HOOD) | $91.59 | $82.54 (-9.89%) | $83.21 (-9.15%) |
| Bullish (BLSH) | $28.47 | $26.58 (-6.64%) | $24.83 (-12.77%) |
| Galaxy (GLXY) | $18.13 | $16.98 (-6.34%) | $15.90 (-12.30%) |
| Nasdaq Composite | 26,184.72 | 25,537.52 (-2.47%) | 25,383.75 (-3.06%) |
| Bitcoin (Coinbase, Thu 20:00 UTC) | $80,743 | $77,075 (-4.54%) | $77,175 (-4.42%) |
Strategy shows why quoted moves differ. It was 11.34% down in the first five minutes and had narrowed to 8.52% by 17:45 UTC, so reports from 7.5% to 12% were all a matter of the hour and the reference price.
That clock explains why the stocks gapped. It does not explain why they fell by more than 4.4%. The market around them is part of it: these are Nasdaq names, in an index down about 3%. Take three points off Robinhood’s 9.15% and you get about 6%, not far from bitcoin. That subtraction is a rough guide, not a measurement.
Company news is another part, though less cleanly than it first looks. Coinbase’s third-quarter report showed $718.7 million of net income, of which $715 million came from marking its own crypto to market, with adjusted net income of $77.7 million and spot volume down 8% on the second quarter. Strategy’s record quarter came with the news that its CFO is leaving, and its stock was quoted 5.75% lower at 23:59 UTC on Thursday. Robinhood had reported earlier in the week, as had Galaxy on 27 October, so they make a rough control group. Around 13:35 UTC that seemed to work, with Robinhood down 9.89% and Galaxy 6.34% against 11.98% for Coinbase. By 17:45 UTC it worked less well: Galaxy was down 12.30% and Bullish 12.77%, close to Coinbase, while Robinhood held at 9.15%. So Coinbase’s results may have cost it something, and we cannot put a number on it.
Leverage is the other part, and it comes in two kinds. Strategy held 848,517 BTC at an average of about $75,446 on 25 October, with preferred dividends of $419.6 million in the third quarter alone. Its shares sit behind those claims, so a move in bitcoin reaches them amplified. Coinbase’s leverage is in the business. Transaction revenue was $590.2 million of about $1.22 billion in the quarter, adjusted profit of $77.7 million leaves little cushion if trading slows, and its $2.2 billion crypto portfolio, mainly bitcoin and ether, gets marked down if prices stay below their 30 September levels.
Sell-side analysts took the other side in notes reported by CoinDesk on Friday. “We would be buyers on weakness,” wrote Ramsey El-Assal of Cantor Fitzgerald, adding: “Overall, this is painful, but it is not 2022.” Compass Point’s Ed Engel and Michael Donovan named Coinbase and Bullish among possible winners from share shifts. Those are sell-side opinions, not evidence of who bought, and nothing in this piece is a recommendation. As of 17:45 UTC the market was not treating Coinbase as a winner.
Bitcoin ETF flows after the hack are not out yet
Thursday’s net inflow of $17.07 million, covered in our midday report, says nothing about the hack, because that session ended at 20:00 UTC, before the theft started. Ether funds lost $105.48 million that day, their fourth outflow in a row, and Solana funds lost $27.69 million, according to SoSoValue data reported by Bitcoin.com. Those flows predate the hack too.
So the question of who was buying while bitcoin held $77,000 has no answer yet. The one US demand gauge available during the session was not encouraging. At 14:18 UTC the CoinDesk live blog showed the Coinbase premium at about two standard deviations below its rolling annual average, a deep discount to Binance. That is one reading from one source, and we cannot say whether it reflects hack-related selling or something else.
Options traders bought protection close to the market. Paradigm traded about $590 million of bitcoin block options in the eight hours after the hack, roughly half of Deribit’s block volume, with the buying at strikes from $74,000 to $78,000, CoinDesk’s Daybook reports. Two 1,000 BTC blocks of mid-November $74,000 puts accounted for about $155 million.
What would prove this reading wrong
This analysis says the timing favours the hack as the bigger weight on bitcoin, with tech as a smaller and unmeasured share. Several results would break that, starting with the nearest.
Friday’s ETF number comes first, usually a few hours after the close. An outflow beyond the $635 million of 22 October would mean US holders were selling through the rout, and that the flat chart hid real selling. Another small inflow would fit a Binance story more than a US demand story.
The Binance fix is the cleanest test. Co-CEO Richard Teng said on Friday that withdrawals should resume within about 40 hours, which points to Sunday 1 November if testing passes, and a full proof-of-reserves report is promised by Monday 2 November. If the hack set the level, a clean restart and clean reserves should lift bitcoin. If it ignores both, something else is holding it down and this piece has the weights wrong. Geoffrey Kendrick of Standard Chartered wrote, “I suspect the negative price action still has some way to go”, and sees a new base only after assets are unfrozen and more detail of the hack emerges.
Monday’s open tests the tech half. If AI stocks fall again and the bitcoin price drops with them with no fresh hack news, Friday’s calm was exhaustion and tech deserves a larger share. Any movement of the 18,270 BTC split across 19 wallets, untouched as of CoinDesk’s trace, would complicate the reading from the other side, since a sale would be new supply that has nothing to do with tech.
For the stocks, watch the gap between Coinbase and Robinhood. If it closes as the Nasdaq settles, the excess was panic. If it lasts, the third-quarter numbers were doing more of the work than the hack.
Compass Point is watching $75,000 to $77,000 on bitcoin, and Cointelegraph puts the 20-day average at $81,324. Coinbase candles have October down 7.6% from its $83,556 open at 17:45 UTC, close to the 7.7% CoinGlass figure that Cointelegraph calls the worst October since 2014. That rank is not settled: each percentage point is about $835, and the month ends at 23:59 UTC on Saturday 31 October.