Bitcoin traded at $73,860 at 05:55 UTC on Wednesday 11 November, according to Coinbase Exchange one-minute data, about $450 below its last price before the US released October’s consumer price index on Tuesday. The Bureau of Labor Statistics said consumer prices rose 0.4% in October and 0.3% excluding food and energy. That core figure is the exact level at which Fed Governor Christopher Waller, speaking a few hours before the release, said a half-point rate hike in December “should be considered”.
The print itself cost bitcoin little. The low of the day came three hours later, at $72,643.48 in the 16:35 UTC candle, deep into the first US cash session after the data. Since midnight UTC the price has stayed inside a band of about $820, between $73,110 and $73,929.
Our Tuesday morning report before the CPI release left bitcoin near $74,750. It returned to that exact area once, at $74,752.81 in the 15:00 UTC candle, and lost it within forty minutes. The question for the rest of the week is less about inflation than about the Federal Reserve: traders now price a December hike as close to certain and argue over whether it will be a quarter point or a half point.
October CPI: 0.4% on the month, 0.3% core, and still no yearly rate
The BLS published the report at 8:30 a.m. Eastern time (13:30 UTC) on Tuesday 10 November. On a seasonally adjusted basis, the all-items index rose 0.4% after 0.6% in September. The core index, which leaves out food and energy, rose 0.3% for a second month.
Energy did less of the work than in September. The energy index rose 0.7% after 5.2%, and gasoline rose 1.0% after 9.1%. Food went the other way, up 0.5% after a flat September. Shelter, the largest single component of core, rose 0.3% after 0.4%.
Forecasts compiled before the release and reported by Bitcoin Magazine had pointed to 0.3% for the headline and 0.2% for core. Both readings came in a tenth of a point higher.
There is again no official yearly inflation rate. The BLS explains that it did not collect survey data for October 2025 because of the lapse in federal appropriations, and could not publish October 2025 indexes for most CPI series, so 12-month changes for October 2026 are missing for those series, the all-items and core indexes among them. Any yearly figure quoted for October is an estimate by a bank or an analyst, not a BLS number.
The next CPI report, for November, is scheduled for Thursday 10 December at 13:30 UTC. That is the day after the Fed’s 8-9 December rate decision, so policymakers will vote with October’s inflation data and not November’s.
How bitcoin moved: a small dip at 13:30, the low three hours later
In the five minutes after the release, bitcoin swung between $74,599 and $73,400 before closing the 13:30 UTC candle at $73,890, about 0.6% under the $74,309 close of the candle before. For the next hour it drifted, and it touched $73,508 in the 14:30 UTC candle, the one in which Wall Street’s cash session opened (9:30 a.m. Eastern).
Then it rose. By the 15:00 UTC candle bitcoin was back at $74,752.81, the highest price of the whole window since midday Tuesday. It did not stay. Between 15:25 and 15:45 UTC the price slid from about $74,380 to a low of $72,770, a fall of roughly $1,600 in twenty minutes. The final low, $72,643.48, came in the 16:35 UTC candle, 2.8% under the 15:00 high and 2.2% under the pre-release level.
Between 17:00 and 18:00 UTC bitcoin traded between $72,699 and $73,211. It closed the 20:00 UTC candle at $73,252 and the 21:00 UTC candle at $73,823, after the US stock market had shut. The Asian session added little: a high of $73,929 in the 01:40 UTC candle, a dip to $73,110 in the 02:30 UTC candle, and a return to about $73,700 by 05:00 UTC.
| Time (UTC) | Coinbase 5-minute candle | BTC-USD |
|---|---|---|
| 10 Nov 13:25 | close, last candle before CPI | $74,309 |
| 10 Nov 13:30 | low / close | $73,400 / $73,890 |
| 10 Nov 14:30 | low, US cash open | $73,508 |
| 10 Nov 15:00 | high of the window | $74,752.81 |
| 10 Nov 15:40 | low | $72,770 |
| 10 Nov 16:35 | low of the window | $72,643.48 |
| 10 Nov 21:00 | close | $73,823 |
| 11 Nov 02:30 | low, Asian session | $73,110 |
Waller drew the 0.3% line before the data came out
Waller gave his speech at the Bank of England Watchers Conference in London on Tuesday, while US inflation data were still “in a few hours”, in his own words. His December position was plain: “I would still support a 25 basis point increase in the FOMC’s policy rate at our December meeting.”
He then set a condition for going further. If October CPI looked like the previous two months, with core “around 0.3 percent or even higher”, he said “a 50 basis point hike in the policy rate should be considered at the December meeting.” He added that “Hiking only 25 basis points would put our credibility at risk, a risk I am not eager to take.”
Core printed 0.3%. On his own test, the bigger move is now on the table. Waller also described a labour market close to maximum employment, with unemployment at 4.1% in October and payroll gains averaging about 80,000 a month, a pattern he called “low hire, low fire”. His remark on the previous month was short: “September’s inflation data were bad.”
Bowman spoke after the print and gave no number
Michelle Bowman, the Fed’s Vice Chair for Supervision, spoke at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington on Tuesday afternoon, with the CPI already out. She used it to estimate that 12-month core PCE inflation, the Fed’s preferred gauge, “likely moved up further to 3.3 percent in October”.
She did not say how she would vote in December. She said “monetary policy is not on a preset course” and that “the benefit of additional policy tightening has to be carefully weighed against its costs” for sectors that are sensitive to interest rates. Before the December meeting, she noted, the Committee will see the October PCE inflation report and the November employment report.
The federal funds target range has been 3-3/4 to 4 percent since the Fed’s 28 October decision to hold, taken 10-2 with two votes for a hike. A quarter-point increase would take it to 4 to 4-1/4 percent. Dallas Fed President Lorie Logan went further than both governors, according to Korean broadcaster SBS, which quoted her as saying the FOMC needs “at least two more 25-basis-point hikes”.
Fed hike odds: December is priced as a hike, the size is the argument
The odds come from three snapshots taken at different times. CME FedWatch, as reported by The Wall Street Journal at 13:53 UTC on Tuesday, 23 minutes after the release, gave about 90% to a quarter-point hike and about 10% to a half point, according to crypto.news. The same outlet put Polymarket’s December market at 85% for a quarter point, 12.7% for a half point or more and 2.9% for no change, on about $22.6 million of volume, as of Tuesday.
After the US close, SBS reported CME FedWatch at 100% for a hike in December, split 88.5% for 25 basis points and 11.5% for 50. A Reuters poll of 101 economists taken between 6 and 10 November, cited by crypto.news, found all of them expecting a quarter-point move.
Put together, those readings say the market moved from asking whether the Fed hikes in December to asking by how much. The half-point scenario that Waller described sits at roughly one chance in ten in each snapshot.
Leverage did not wash out on the drop
Bitcoin futures traders did not unwind. On Binance, the funding rate on the BTCUSDT contract stayed positive in each of the last eight eight-hour periods, between 0.0034% and 0.0100%, according to the exchange’s public data. The latest one, settled at 00:00 UTC on Wednesday, was 0.0080%, close to the 0.01% baseline. Positive funding means longs pay shorts to keep their positions.
Open interest on the same contract went up while the price went down. It stood at 96,701 BTC at 14:00 UTC on Monday 9 November, peaked near 100,922 BTC at 14:00 UTC on Tuesday, just after the CPI release, and was 100,447 BTC at 05:56 UTC on Wednesday, about $7.4 billion. That is roughly 4% more contracts than on Monday afternoon. A falling price with rising open interest means traders opened new positions on the way down instead of closing old longs, unlike the forced selling of Monday’s $1.13 billion liquidation. Ether looks different: Binance’s ETHUSDT funding turned slightly negative at the last two settlements, -0.0021% at 16:00 UTC on Tuesday and -0.0048% at midnight, meaning shorts paid longs, with open interest at 2.30 million ETH at 05:56 UTC.
ETF money was leaving before the print
US spot bitcoin ETFs went into CPI week on a run of withdrawals. Farside Investors’ data show net outflows in six of the seven sessions from 30 October to 9 November, with a single inflow of $74.6 million on 4 November; the seven sessions add up to about $2.13 billion of net outflows. The last of them was a $201 million outflow on 9 November, when BlackRock’s IBIT posted its seventh straight day of withdrawals. The Block counted $1.28 billion out of bitcoin ETFs in the week to 6 November, the worst week since June, and $365.3 million out of ether ETFs.
Ether held $2,000, XRP fell further
Ether followed bitcoin’s path with more amplitude. It closed the 13:25 UTC candle at $2,095.52 on Coinbase, spiked to $2,104.41 in the first minutes after the release and closed that five-minute candle at $2,063.60, then touched $2,003.24 in the 15:40 UTC candle without breaking $2,000. It traded at $2,066 at 05:51 UTC on Wednesday.
Solana’s low was $81.27 and XRP’s $1.0302, both in the same 15:40 UTC candle. At the 05:45 UTC market snapshot, ether was down 2.7% over 24 hours and 8.2% over seven days, solana down 3.6% and 9.0%, and XRP down 3.5% and 16.3%. Total crypto market value was $2.48 trillion, bitcoin’s share 59.7%, and the Fear and Greed index stood at 29, in fear.
Levels traders quote: $73,000 and the 200-day average
Two analysts quoted by The Block on Tuesday evening put the same zone in focus. Matt Mena, senior crypto research strategist at 21Shares, singled out $73,000 as the level that matters most. Lewis Huang of Bitget pointed to the 200-day moving average near $73,200 and said “higher yields and a stronger dollar could add to recent selling pressure” for bitcoin.
Bitcoin closed most five-minute candles under $73,200 between 15:35 and 18:25 UTC on Tuesday, then moved back above it from 18:30 UTC. Overnight it went under that level only briefly, to $73,110 in the 02:30 UTC candle, and has spent the rest of the night a few hundred dollars higher.
Today and Friday: bond market shut, PPI at 13:30 UTC, a difficulty cut
Wednesday is Veterans Day, a US federal holiday. The industry body SIFMA recommends a full close of the US bond market, and the BLS has no release on its schedule. That leaves crypto without a Treasury market to react to until Thursday.
The next inflation number is the producer price index for October, due on Friday 13 November at 8:30 a.m. Eastern time (13:30 UTC), followed by import and export prices on Tuesday 17 November. Producer prices measure what businesses receive, and economists use parts of them to estimate the PCE figure the Fed targets.
Also on Friday, bitcoin’s blockchain and earns a reward, which makes rewriting history very expensive.">mining difficulty is due to reset. Estimates put the change at about minus 4.8%, as our report on the 13 November difficulty drop explained.
Why a December rate hike matters for bitcoin
A higher policy rate raises the return on cash and short-term Treasury bills, which pay a known yield with no price risk. Bitcoin pays nothing, so each extra quarter point raises the bar it has to clear for investors who weigh one against the other. Rate rises also tend to push the dollar up, which is the channel Huang pointed to.
For holders in euros, the exchange rate adds a second layer: bitcoin is priced in dollars on most venues, so a stronger dollar can lower the euro value of the same holding even when the dollar price does not move.
Between now and 8-9 December, the Fed gets the October PCE report and the November jobs report, the two releases Bowman named. The next CPI comes the day after the meeting.
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