Bitcoin held $81,000 as the Dow fell and Brent hit $116, but the buyers it needs are still missing

The bitcoin price today barely moved while the rest of the market did. On Friday 23 October bitcoin traded at $81,689 on Coinbase at 16:46 UTC, 0.5% above its UTC open of $81,306, after a day spent between $80,943 and $81,962. Over the same hours the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 556 points, or 1.05%, by 16:54 UTC, Brent crude rose 2.9% to $116.45 a barrel and the 10-year Treasury yield climbed back to 4.99%, according to CNBC quotes. The Nasdaq Composite, which had dragged bitcoin down on Thursday, was flat, up 0.05%.

So who is still selling bitcoin at $81,600? On the data available at 16:50 UTC, nobody in a hurry. Forced selling is shrinking: 24-hour liquidations were $331 million at 16:39 UTC on CoinGlass, against $441 million a day earlier. The selling that does show up is slow and voluntary. US spot bitcoin ETFs gave back $635.6 million on Thursday, ether funds $110.6 million, and Binance-linked wallets have sent a net $7.5 billion of USDT back to Tether this year, according to Bitquery data reported by CryptoSlate. What is missing is a buyer big enough to take bitcoin out of its range. Read together, those figures make the $81,000 to $82,000 band look like a pause rather than a floor: the price is holding because nobody is forced to sell, not because demand has come back. That is a reading of flows, not a price forecast.

The ETF cost basis was the subject of our Thursday analysis of bitcoin’s fall under $84,000, and the fund-by-fund breakdown of Thursday’s outflow ran in our Friday morning report. What changed during Friday’s US session is where the pressure went, what the day’s US data said, and who is trading bitcoin and who has stepped back.

Bitcoin price today: a $1,019 range while the Dow lost 550 points

Thursday’s pattern was simple. The Nasdaq fell 2.6% and bitcoin followed it under $81,000. Friday broke it. The AI sell-off paused, the weight moved to the Dow and to oil, and bitcoin did nothing much at all.

The hourly candles of Coinbase’s BTC-USD market, read at 16:46 UTC, show how little happened. Bitcoin opened the 20:00 UTC hour on Thursday, the US close, at $81,381. After the flat Asian night described in our morning report, trading thinned out in Europe: 47 BTC changed hands in the 06:00 UTC hour, the quietest of the day. Volume came back with Wall Street. The price did not.

The 16:00 UTC hour was still running when we read it; its close is the last trade at 16:46 UTC. Source: Coinbase Exchange public hourly candles, BTC-USD.

The 14:00 UTC hour was the only one with some violence in it. Within it bitcoin traded both at the day’s high of $81,962 and at its low of $80,943, then closed at $81,679. That hour came right after the S&P Global flash PMIs at 13:45 UTC and the University of Michigan survey at 14:00 UTC. Even so, the low stayed above Thursday’s $80,879, and the whole day fitted in a band of about $1,019, or 1.25%.

Ether behaved the same way. On Coinbase it moved between $2,375 and $2,414 since Thursday’s US close and traded near $2,407 in the 16:00 UTC hour. Solana held $103 to $105. Total crypto market capitalisation was $2.75 trillion at 16:32 UTC and bitcoin’s share 59.4%, according to the CoinGecko figures cached on Coindaro’s market pages. Alternative.me’s daily Fear and Greed index read 50, neutral, on 23 October, after 68 on the 22nd: the mood cooled even though the price did not fall further.

Where the selling went instead: the Dow, Brent at $116 and the 10-year near 5%

The US session opened lower at 13:30 UTC, with the Dow down about 1% and the S&P 500 down 0.6%, according to CNBC’s live blog. By 16:54 UTC the picture had split, on CNBC quotes. The Dow was at 52,312.43, down 1.05%. The S&P 500 was at 7,639.60, down only 0.31%, and the Nasdaq at 26,020.58, up 0.05%. The Russell 2000 of smaller companies was down 0.28% at 16:39 UTC. These are intraday levels: the US market closes at 20:00 UTC, after this piece was written.

Why the Dow fell harder is not fully established. CNBC listed single-stock moves before the open: AT&T and T-Mobile down about 5% and Verizon down 4% after a Bloomberg report that SpaceX is in talks for access to at least 80,000 cell sites, and Moderna down 5.7% after a 25% fall on Thursday. That explains part of it. No source we read gave a single cause for the index.

Oil gave the day its tone. The December Brent contract traded at $116.45 at 16:44 UTC, up $3.28 or 2.90%, and December WTI at $102.84, up 3.39%, at the same time (CNBC, delayed data). CoinDesk reported that Brent went above $116 “for the first time since late April”. The Investrade mid-morning note tied the move to Middle East supply risks and to reports of possible new military action involving Iran. Thursday’s close was already $113.17, the highest since early May.

Yields went the wrong way for risk assets, gently. The 10-year Treasury yield was at 4.99% at 16:54 UTC, up 3.7 basis points, and the 2-year at 4.686%, up 5.1 basis points, according to CNBC. That only takes back a small part of Thursday’s drop, the largest since March 2023. The dollar index was up 0.19% at 101.80. Gold for December delivery fell 1.08% to $4,016.60 an ounce at 16:44 UTC. The VIX, Wall Street’s volatility gauge, was at 19.95 at 16:54 UTC, up 4.8%, after 20.24 earlier in the session (CNBC).

Behind the index moves sits a rotation that CNBC documented on Friday: an S&P 500 index without AI stocks was up about 6.6% in October, against about -0.4% for the full S&P 500, with energy and consumer staples up double digits for the month and technology and communication services down more than 5%. Bitcoin has been trading with the AI side of that split. On Friday AI stocks held steady, and so did bitcoin.

One more item from outside crypto. Protos reported on 23 October, citing Axios, that JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo, Citi and Bank of America lost a combined $22.8 billion of market value on Thursday after a scare about AI agents gaining access to customer accounts. That is one outlet’s tally for five large banks, and CNBC noted that a regional bank ETF rose 2.5% the same day, so it does not describe banks in general. It is still another case of AI headlines moving prices well beyond tech.

Michigan and the PMIs were not the inflation shock some had feared

Friday’s data were billed as a test. CryptoSlate had written on 22 October that bitcoin’s $80,000 area faced a “Friday inflation test”, with the upside case being that inflation expectations held at or below their preliminary readings. They did.

The University of Michigan’s final October index of consumer sentiment came in at 48.0 at 14:00 UTC, against 48.1 in September and 53.6 a year earlier, according to the survey’s own release. Current conditions fell to 46.7 from 50.9; expectations rose to 48.8 from 46.3. Year-ahead inflation expectations were 4.7%, up from 4.6% in September, and long-run expectations 3.5%, up from 3.4%. Both matched the preliminary October figures, according to Investrade and CNBC. The survey’s statement said expectations over both horizons rose for a second straight month “to their highest readings since May”, and that “purchasing power continues to dominate consumer views of the economy”.

The S&P Global flash PMIs at 13:45 UTC, as reported by Investrade, showed an economy still growing fast: composite 57.6 against 58.4 in September, services 57.9 against a 58.0 forecast, manufacturing 56.0 against 55.5 expected. Neither release changed the Fed story much. That is what the bitcoin chart says too: a shake in the 14:00 UTC hour, then the same range.

Fed odds: a hold next Wednesday, a December hike mostly priced

The Federal Reserve decides on Wednesday 28 October at 18:00 UTC, with Chair Kevin Warsh’s press conference at 18:30 UTC. On CME FedWatch, read at about 17:00 UTC on Friday, futures gave an 88.9% chance of no change from the current 3.75% to 4.00% range and an 11.1% chance of a quarter-point hike. For the 9 December meeting, the tool showed a 78.5% chance of higher rates, mostly a single hike (70.1%). On 20 October Coindaro had read 82.8% for a December hike on the same tool, so Friday’s data did not push those bets up.

Economists polled by Reuters from 16 to 20 October, cited in our morning report, see it the same way. For bitcoin, a hold on 28 October is what the market already assumes. A surprise would be the hike, or a press conference that sounds firmer than expected.

Who is selling bitcoin: ETF holders taking money out, not traders being forced out

The answer to who is selling starts with the funds. Farside’s table, read at about 16:52 UTC on Friday, still showed no row for 23 October: US ETF flows are published after the US close, so Friday’s figure was not out at the time of writing. The days that are out tell a clear story when they are put side by side.

Across the 14 sessions from 5 to 22 October in Farside’s table, bitcoin funds had net outflows on seven and lost a net $468.2 million, by Coindaro’s sum of Farside’s daily totals. The three-day burst of $1.07 billion from 19 to 21 October was the exception: before it, the funds had lost a net $907.3 million from 5 to 16 October, and Thursday wiped out 59% of the burst in a single session. Cointelegraph called Thursday’s the largest one-day outflow since 25 June.

This is not panic. ETF redemptions reflect decisions by holders, and they arrive over days, not minutes. It is also why the price can stay flat while money leaves: when outflows are spread over days, other buyers can absorb them without the price breaking. What the numbers do say is that ETFs are not the buyer this market needs right now. Glassnode, quoted by CryptoSlate on 22 October, put 30-day average ETF trading volume at under a quarter of its level a year earlier.

Ether funds have had two inflow days in 14 sessions

The ether side is weaker. Ether ETFs had net outflows on 12 of the 14 October sessions on Farside’s ether table, with only 13 October (+$24.8 million) and 21 October (+$14.9 million) positive, for a net loss of $1.09 billion from 5 to 22 October. On Thursday BlackRock’s ETHA alone gave back $75.5 million of the $110.6 million total. The reasons behind that gap, from staking to the ETH/BTC ratio, were the subject of our analysis of why ether ETFs lost more than bitcoin ETFs. Nothing in the last week has reversed them.

Smaller products moved the same way on 22 October, according to Cointelegraph: Solana ETFs about -$9 million, HYPE ETFs about -$8 million, XRP ETFs about +$3.6 million.

Liquidations fell to $331 million: no forced sellers this time

If the selling were forced, it would show up in liquidations, the automatic closing of leveraged positions when margin runs out (our glossary entry on liquidation explains the mechanics). It does not. CoinGlass showed $330.83 million of liquidations across all coins over 24 hours at about 16:39 UTC on Friday, down 11.9%, of which $249.70 million, or 75.5%, were long positions. Bitcoin’s share was only $54.16 million. Ether’s was larger, at $61.57 million. The largest single order was a $3.77 million long on a Hyperliquid contract that tracks SOXL, a leveraged chip-stock ETF: a bet on semiconductors, not on a cryptocurrency.

Compare that with Thursday: $431.1 million in our Thursday piece and $440.9 million in the 24 hours to 01:30 UTC on Friday, about 90% of it from longs. The flush is getting smaller, and the share of longs being hit is falling. Open interest across all coins was $143.25 billion at 16:39 UTC, up 0.01% in 24 hours and slightly above the $141.8 billion Coindaro quoted on Thursday. Traders are neither adding leverage aggressively nor being pushed out. Funding rates, which would show whether that leverage leans long or short, did not load on CoinGlass and are not reported here.

Twenty-four-hour volume across derivatives was $175.56 billion at the same time, down 15.5%. Put together with the thin Coinbase spot volume of the European morning, it describes a market waiting, not a market under attack.

The missing buyer on exchanges: Binance’s Tether flows and a shrinking USDT supply

The second absent buyer is stablecoin money sitting on exchanges, ready to buy. A CryptoSlate article by Oluwapelumi Adejumo, published on Friday and based on Bitquery data to 22 October, tracks Tether’s USDT between Binance-linked wallets and the issuer on Ethereum and Tron. In 2026 those wallets sent $23.1 billion of USDT to Tether and received $15.6 billion back, a net $7.5 billion flowing toward the issuer, the pattern you would expect from redemptions. In 2025 the same flows ran a net $6.4 billion the other way, into Binance. The “$14 billion” in the article’s headline is the swing between the two years, not a one-day move.

The same data show Binance’s identified Ethereum stablecoin holdings at $38.8 billion on 22 October, against a record $45.6 billion in November 2025, $43.9 billion in April and $39.5 billion in July. The largest cold wallet held about $16 billion of USDT on 22 October, against about $28 billion at its peak. The article itself warns that transfers do not show how much was actually redeemed for dollars, that moves between chains can cancel out, and that this is not proof customer money left the exchange. It is one analytics firm’s reading of on-chain flows.

A second source points the same way, at the scale of the whole market. DefiLlama’s data put USDT’s circulating supply at about $182.7 billion on 23 October, down from about $183.6 billion a week earlier and $187.3 billion on 1 January 2026, so roughly $4.6 billion smaller this year. A year ago it was about $182.5 billion. Stablecoin supply that is flat to shrinking means no new dollars are arriving on crypto rails to buy dips. That fits a market where sellers are patient and buyers are short of fresh money.

Patient sellers, absent buyers: what that means for the $81,000 area

Put the pieces together and the picture is consistent. The liquidation numbers rule out a forced seller. ETF outflows and the Binance and USDT data point to money leaving or staying out, at a slow pace. And the buyers that pushed bitcoin to $84,000 earlier in the week, when the ETFs took in $1.07 billion in three days, have not come back.

That is why the stability of Friday is not proof of strength. A market where nobody is forced to sell can hold a range for days. It breaks when one side shows up. Glassnode’s levels, as quoted by CryptoSlate on 22 October, give the map: the average cost of corporate bitcoin treasuries near $80,200, a cluster of leveraged positions near $79,600, the True Market Mean near $77,600 below, and a band of overhead supply between $85,000 and $87,500 above, where buyers from six to twelve months ago sit near an average of $86,700. These are model estimates from one firm, not Coindaro forecasts. Glassnode also noted that corporate treasury purchases since June are under 10% of their November 2024 peak, another buyer that has gone quiet.

For readers in the euro area: at $81,690 and the EUR/USD rate of 1.1211 quoted in Investrade’s US mid-morning note, bitcoin was worth about EUR 72,870.

What would change the picture: flows, levels and dates to watch

The range has clear exits. These are the events and figures that would tell whether the missing buyer is coming back, or whether the patient sellers are about to become less patient.

• Friday’s ETF flow, which Farside posts after the US close. Two days in a row above $100 million of net inflows would be the first sign of the buyer returning; another outflow day of several hundred million would extend October’s net loss.
• A daily close under $80,000, then the $79,600 leverage cluster Glassnode identifies, would test whether forced selling comes back. On Friday the low was $80,943 at 14:00 UTC, above Thursday’s $80,879.
• Brent: the December contract was at $116.45 at 16:44 UTC. A move toward $120 would put the inflation question back on the table for the Fed.
• The 10-year Treasury yield, at 4.99% at 16:54 UTC on Friday. A return above about 5.1%, where it stood on Wednesday before Thursday’s drop, would put borrowing costs back in the way of risk assets.
• The Fed decision on Wednesday 28 October at 18:00 UTC and Kevin Warsh’s press conference at 18:30 UTC. Futures priced a hold at 88.9% on CME FedWatch at about 17:00 UTC on Friday; the 9 December meeting is the one where they expect a hike (78.5%).
• Thursday 29 October at 12:30 UTC: the first estimate of third-quarter US GDP and September’s personal income and spending report, which carries PCE inflation, per the BEA release schedule. After the US close the same day, Strategy reports its third quarter, with a webinar at 5:00 p.m. New York time (21:00 UTC) per its 8 October press release, and Coinbase publishes its results, with a Q&A at 2:00 p.m. Pacific time (21:00 UTC) per its 14 October announcement. Strategy is the largest corporate holder of bitcoin; Coinbase’s numbers will show how trading volumes held up in the quarter.
• The Bank of Japan meeting on 29 and 30 October, with the yen near 156.75 per dollar on Friday morning.
• Deribit’s monthly options expiry on Friday 30 October, and the US midterm elections on Tuesday 3 November.
• On the stablecoin side: a turn in USDT supply back to growth, or Binance’s stablecoin holdings rising again, would mean dollars returning to the exchanges where bitcoin is bought.

What we do not know yet

Several figures that matter were not available when this analysis was written at about 17:00 UTC. The US closes come at 20:00 UTC: the index levels above are intraday. Friday’s ETF flows for bitcoin and ether are not published. Funding rates were not available on CoinGlass. The cause of the Dow’s underperformance is only partly explained by the telecom and Moderna moves. And Moody’s review of France, due on 23 October, had no result we could find at the time of writing.

Bitcoin has now held $81,000 for two days with its buyers missing. The first sign of whether they return through the ETFs comes with Farside’s Friday row; the first scheduled shock is the Fed, on Wednesday at 18:00 UTC.