Wall Street rallied on Monday 26 October, and the bitcoin price today did not follow. It fell to $79,300 at 13:36 UTC, six minutes after US stocks opened, climbed back to a session high of $80,710 at 15:21 UTC and then slid back to $80,040 at 17:48 UTC, according to Coinbase Exchange prices. Over the same hours the S&P 500 was up 0.72% and the Nasdaq 0.96% on Yahoo Finance’s ticker at about 17:55 UTC, oil fell on hopes of a US-Iran deal and the 10-year Treasury yield eased to 4.98%. This is the US session so far: the cash market closes at 20:00 UTC, after this piece was written, and Monday’s ETF flows will only be known later in the evening.
Crypto was the market that stayed put. Ether traded at $2,316 at 17:49 UTC, near the middle of a $2,290 to $2,340 day. This piece asks one question: is the floor bitcoin has held since Saturday, between $79,100 and $79,300, a base or only a pause before the Fed? Monday’s derivatives data lean toward a base for now, and the last section sets out what would prove that reading wrong. The calendar brings two tests: the Federal Reserve’s decision on Wednesday 28 October at 18:00 UTC, and Coinbase’s quarterly results after the US close on Thursday 29 October.
Bitcoin price today: $79,300 at the US open, $80,040 into the evening
The Asian session had already done some damage. Bitcoin opened the UTC day at $80,053 and printed its lowest level of Monday, $79,255, in the 03:00 UTC hour, the dip covered in our morning report on bitcoin slipping under $80,000 before the Fed. By 12:00 UTC it was back at $80,205.
Then came the busiest hour of the day by far. Between 13:00 and 14:00 UTC, 1,589 BTC changed hands on Coinbase, about six times the 257 BTC of the hour before. The price drifted from $80,203 at 13:00 to $79,820 at 13:29, and the selling picked up with the equity open at 13:30: 58 BTC traded in that minute and 92 BTC in the next. The low of $79,300 came at 13:36 UTC. Two minutes later bitcoin was back at $79,962.
Nobody has explained that burst. It coincided with the equity open and came minutes after Anthropic’s IPO filing became public, but no exchange, fund or market maker has said what drove it, and we do not know who sold.
| Hour (UTC) | Open | High | Low | Close | BTC traded |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 12:00 | $80,284 | $80,436 | $80,137 | $80,205 | 257 |
| 13:00 | $80,203 | $80,204 | $79,300 | $79,566 | 1,589 |
| 14:00 | $79,566 | $80,291 | $79,445 | $80,273 | 714 |
| 15:00 | $80,273 | $80,710 | $80,218 | $80,299 | 595 |
| 16:00 | $80,299 | $80,329 | $79,643 | $80,098 | 326 |
| 17:00 to 17:48 | $80,100 | $80,436 | $80,032 | $80,040 (last) | about 257 |
Source: Coinbase Exchange public BTC-USD candles, read by Coindaro between 17:38 and 17:49 UTC. The US-session range since 13:00 UTC is $79,300 to $80,710, or 1.8%, on 3,458 BTC traded on Coinbase.
Coindaro’s market snapshot at 17:21 UTC put bitcoin 0.55% lower over 24 hours and 2.15% lower over seven days, with ether down 1.41% and 3.11% over the same windows. Solana hovered near $101 (Coinbase day range $99.70 to $102.55). Total crypto market value stood at $2.71 trillion, bitcoin’s share at 59.5%, and the Fear and Greed index at 50, neutral, down from 59 on Monday 19 October on Alternative.me’s figures. Bitcoin’s high of last week was $84,856 on Coinbase on Wednesday 21 October. Cointelegraph puts the 2026 yearly open at $87,490 and has bitcoin on track for a loss of about 4% in October.
Stocks rose on cheaper oil and AI money; bitcoin stayed in a $1,400 range
The equity tape told a different story. On the ticker of the Yahoo Finance live blog, read at about 17:55 UTC (last entry 17:42 UTC), the S&P 500 stood at 7,678.88 (+0.72%), the Nasdaq Composite at 26,204.40 (+0.96%), the Dow at 52,312.28 (+0.19%) and the Russell 2000 at 2,792.78 (+0.61%). The VIX was down 5.7% at 18.35. Tesla gained about 6% after Barclays upgraded it to Overweight and raised its target to $450 from $370. Friday’s closes were 7,623.68 for the S&P 500 and 25,955.34 for the Nasdaq, whose Friday finish was its lowest since 3 August, according to Cointelegraph.
Oil did most of the work on the macro side. Brent slipped just below $110 at 11:05 UTC, more than 6% under Friday’s high, on hopes of a deal between Washington and Tehran, CoinDesk reported. Its morning markets piece tied the move to Qatari mediators arriving in the Iranian capital on Sunday and to President Trump saying there would be no strike that day, while keeping the option open. On Friday Brent had touched about $117, its highest since 19 March, according to Cointelegraph. By about 16:10 UTC, Yahoo had Brent near $110 and WTI near $101 after a visit by Saudi Arabia’s defence minister to Tehran; December WTI was down 1.04% at $102.20 on its ticker at about 17:55 UTC. Gold was up 0.65% at $4,033.90. The dollar index sat just below 102 at 11:05 UTC (CoinDesk).
The 10-year Treasury yield was 4.982% on Yahoo’s ticker, barely changed and still close to 5%, a level that matters for an asset that pays no coupon.
The day’s corporate news was about artificial intelligence and capital. Anthropic filed its S-1 with the SEC on Monday for a Nasdaq listing under the ticker ANT, with offering terms not yet disclosed, according to the EDGAR record and CoinDesk. Meta announced a capital raise of about $95 billion before the open: a $35 billion offering, split into about $22.5 billion of common stock and $12.5 billion of preferred shares, plus a planned $60 billion at-the-market programme of new Class C shares (CoinDesk, 11:52 UTC). At 13:40 UTC, CoinDesk’s Stephen Alpher wrote on the same live blog that the two deals added up to about $200 billion that would not be going into bitcoin. That is an opinion. No flow data supports or refutes it today.
What the numbers do show is the gap. On a day when chips, Tesla and small caps rose, bitcoin finished the first four and a half hours of the US session within $250 of where it started them. It has now spent three days pinned near the same floor, since Saturday’s dip to $79,107 at 15:25 UTC, and Monday’s equity gains did nothing to lift it off.
ETF flows: $1.08 billion in, then $774 million out
Monday’s ETF figures come out after the US close, so the latest complete data are last week’s. US spot bitcoin ETFs took in a net $301 million in the week to Friday 23 October, ending two straight weeks of outflows of $228 million and $680 million, according to Farside data reported by Cointelegraph. The week split in two: about $1.08 billion came in from Monday to Wednesday, then about $774 million left on Thursday and Friday. October as a whole is still negative, at about $314 million out. CoinDesk, also citing Farside, gave Friday at minus $138 million and the two-day total at $772 million.
The daily rows below come from two providers, so they do not add up to the cent. TFTC’s SoSoValue figures for Monday to Wednesday sum to $1.078 billion, in line with Cointelegraph’s $1.08 billion; Thursday’s minus $635.5 million plus CoinDesk’s minus $138 million for Friday gives about $774 million out, and the five days together come to about $305 million, against Farside’s $301 million. SoSoValue’s own Friday figure, cited in our Saturday analysis, was minus $137.9 million.
| Day | Net flow, US spot bitcoin ETFs | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Mon 19 Oct | +$526.6M | TFTC (SoSoValue data) |
| Tue 20 Oct | +$23.2M | TFTC (SoSoValue data) |
| Wed 21 Oct | +$528.4M | TFTC (SoSoValue data) |
| Thu 22 Oct | -$635.5M | TFTC (SoSoValue data) |
| Fri 23 Oct | -$138M | CoinDesk (Farside data) |
| Week | +$301M | Cointelegraph (Farside data) |
Thursday’s exit was broad. BlackRock’s IBIT lost $254.1 million, Fidelity’s FBTC $217.5 million and ARK’s ARKB $109.4 million, according to TFTC’s table, with Grayscale’s GBTC and Bitwise’s BITB adding about $57 million between them. US spot ether ETFs lost about $221 million over the week, their fourth weekly outflow in a row (Cointelegraph).
Two reference points frame where bitcoin sits against these buyers. Glassnode puts the average cost of US spot ETF holders near $81,500 (data to 19 October, cited by CryptoSlate), so at $80,040 the average ETF holder is about 1.8% under water. And DWF Labs, quoted by Cointelegraph, found that ETF investors sold during seven of the eight bitcoin sell-offs of 15% or more since the funds launched in January 2024. “ETF investors aren’t the dip buyers people think they are,” DWF wrote. For how these funds create and redeem shares, see our glossary entry on crypto ETFs.
Derivatives show positions rebuilt, not a flush
If the 13:36 UTC drop had been a forced unwind, open interest would have fallen. It rose. Coindaro’s reading of Binance’s public API shows open interest on the USDT-margined bitcoin perpetual at 93,685 BTC at 12:00 UTC and 95,638 BTC (about $7.69 billion) at 15:00 UTC, up about 2.1% across the open. Traders added positions through the dip and the rebound. About 2,000 BTC of that came off in the next hour, when bitcoin slipped to $79,643 at 16:36 UTC, and the figure stood at 94,021 BTC at 17:40 UTC: some of the new positions were closed, but there was no cascade.
Funding agrees. The eight-hour rate on Binance’s perpetual was +0.0017% at the 00:00 UTC settlement, +0.0079% at 08:00 and +0.0100% at 16:00, which is the standard baseline: longs pay a small premium, nothing crowded. Binance’s global long/short account ratio was 2.25 at 17:00 UTC, meaning about 69% of accounts were net long. Our explainer on perpetual futures covers how funding and open interest work.
Options were calm. Deribit’s DVOL, the 30-day implied volatility index, held between 38.5 and 38.7 from 12:00 to 17:00 UTC, inside a 37.8 to 39.0 range over the previous 28 hours. The dip did not push traders into protection.
The positioning map for Friday is lopsided toward calls. Deribit’s public data at 17:45 UTC showed 245,573 bitcoin call contracts open against 147,680 puts, a put/call ratio of 0.60. For the monthly expiry on Friday 30 October at 08:00 UTC, the largest strikes are the $95,000 call (19,951 contracts), the $100,000 call (11,284) and the $90,000 call (10,717); the biggest put is at $70,000 (4,377). Coindaro’s own max-pain calculation for that expiry is $78,000, an indicator of where option buyers would lose the most, not a forecast. The largest strike expiring on Wednesday 28 October, the day of the Fed, is a $77,000 put with 736 contracts.
CoinDesk, at 11:24 UTC, put total crypto open interest up 0.85% at $139.9 billion over 24 hours and liquidations down 71% to $153 million, with bitcoin’s put skew easing to about 12.5% from 14.5%. We have no verified liquidation total for the US session itself.
Galaxy says the bear market is over, and names $76,540 as the test
The loudest call of the day came from Galaxy Research, though it was not new. Alex Thorn, Galaxy’s head of firmwide research, argued in a note dated 22 October on Galaxy’s site, written with bitcoin at $81,391 at 19:51 UTC that day, that the bear market ended at the 30 June 2026 low and that bitcoin is in an accumulation phase. The Block, Decrypt and Bitcoin Magazine reported it on Monday as fresh news. “We believe the bottom is in, selling pressure has diminished, the debasement case has strengthened, and the crowd has left,” the note says, as quoted by The Block. This is Galaxy’s view, not Coindaro’s.
Galaxy’s case in its own numbers
The technical part rests on two averages. The 200-week moving average held as a floor: bitcoin’s worst weekly close was 4.7% under it, against 1.4% in 2015, 2.8% in 2018 and 32% in 2022. And the 50-week average, now at $76,540, was reclaimed in September after 44 weeks below it, with five straight weekly closes above it through the week to 18 October.
On positioning, Galaxy says asset managers’ net long in CME bitcoin futures fell from 43,300 BTC in the week of the all-time high to 18,400 BTC, down 57%, and leveraged funds’ net short shrank from 71,400 BTC to 30,600 BTC. On supply, coins unmoved for five years or more have moved at about 34,000 BTC a month in 2026, against 47,000 in 2025 and 67,000 in 2024. US spot ETFs added 87,000 BTC since the June low, and their holdings fell only 11% from peak to trough while the price fell 53%.
The on-chain and cycle arguments follow. Galaxy says the MVRV ratio, market value over realised value, bottomed at 1.10 this cycle, far above the 0.56, 0.69 and 0.75 of earlier lows. Spot price regained the short-term-holder cost basis on 19 August and was 9% above it on 22 October; Decrypt puts that basis at $74,811. Earlier cycle bottoms came 777 to 912 days after a halving, and 22 October was day 916. The macro leg is the debasement case: federal debt at $40.44 trillion, a fiscal 2026 deficit of $1.99 trillion and a 10-year yield that peaked at 5.31% on 5 October, its highest since 2007. Galaxy sets no formal target and writes that bitcoin has shown it can run to at least $125,000.
What would prove Galaxy wrong, by its own account
The note lists four invalidation conditions. The first is a weekly close under the 50-week average, $76,540 today, that is not regained within a month. The second is ETF holdings falling through their 13 July trough of 1.22 million BTC. The third is a credible, dated path to a quantum computer able to break bitcoin’s cryptography. The fourth is a real US fiscal consolidation, which would weaken the debasement argument. Galaxy says none is in evidence today. Keep in mind that a 50-week average moves: as older, higher weeks roll off, the line falls, so the tripwire will not stay at $76,540.
What cuts the other way
Several facts sit awkwardly with the call. Galaxy and Thorn hold bitcoin, as Decrypt notes from their disclosures. The historical comparisons rest on small samples: four earlier 50-week reclaims since 2011 and three earlier halving cycles, in a market whose buyers have changed since ETFs arrived. A shallower drawdown can reflect a different market structure as much as a stronger floor.
The shorter-term data are mixed. The cushion over the short-term holders’ cost basis has shrunk from 9% on 22 October to about 7% at $80,040, using Decrypt’s $74,811 figure, and October ETF flows are negative. A 10-year yield near 5% and a December rate hike priced at about 80% (CoinDesk, citing CME FedWatch) do not help a non-yielding asset. And analyst Benjamin Cowen, cited in Cointelegraph’s weekly preview, called bitcoin’s trips to $87,000 in late September and early October a “fakeout” and expects weakness through year-end.
Bitcoin and gold are last among 21 asset classes in 2026, as of Friday’s close
A second chart circulated all day. Charlie Bilello, chief market strategist at Creative Planning, posted on X on Sunday 25 October at 15:07 UTC that bitcoin (-7.3%) and gold (-7.5%) were the two worst performers among the major asset classes he tracks in 2026. “This is something we haven’t seen before in any calendar year,” he wrote. His figures run to the close of Friday 23 October; we have not recomputed them at Monday’s price.
At the other end of Bilello’s 21-class table, as reported by Cointribune, a commodities basket was up 52.5%, US large-cap stocks 12.3% and short-term Treasury bills 2.9%, with 57% of the classes in positive territory. The ranking says less than it seems. It is a snapshot of ten months that follow very strong years for both laggards: bitcoin gained 121% in 2024 and gold 63.7% in 2025, on Bilello’s figures as reported by Cointribune and Bitcoin.com News. Bitcoin’s year-to-date loss was also far deeper before the rebound from the 30 June low, which is the low Galaxy treats as the bottom. Galaxy makes a related point from the other side: the Nasdaq 100 was up about 18% this year against about 7% down for bitcoin as of 22 October, a gap the note discusses under the risk of AI competing for capital.
Treasury companies: Strategy paused, Bitmine and Strive bought
Strategy bought no bitcoin from 19 to 25 October, ending a five-week buying streak, and repurchased about $204.9 million of its STRC preferred shares instead, according to its Monday filing as reported by The Block and Cointelegraph; it holds 848,517 BTC. Bitmine added 10,452 ETH to reach 6,051,933 ETH (The Block), and Strive bought 6,182 BTC for $511.4 million, taking it to 43,000 BTC (CoinDesk).
What would move bitcoin off $80,000 this week
The floor has held three times in three days: $79,107 on Saturday 24 October at 15:25 UTC, $79,255 in the 03:00 UTC hour Monday and $79,300 at 13:36 UTC Monday, all on Coinbase. Two events this week can break the range either way.
The Fed on Wednesday: a hawkish pause is priced
The Federal Open Market Committee meets on 27 and 28 October; the statement is due at 18:00 UTC on Wednesday and Chair Kevin Warsh speaks at 18:30 UTC (details on our FOMC October 2026 event page). The target range is 3.75% to 4.00% after the September hike. CME FedWatch showed about 90% odds of no change and about 80% odds of a December hike, according to CoinDesk at 11:24 UTC. Economist Alan Blinder, cited by Yahoo Finance, expects a “hawkish pause” after hotter-than-expected inflation data.
A hike on Wednesday would be a surprise against roughly 10% odds. Pushback on a December move would cut against the 80% now priced and could ease the yield pressure near 5%. Firm guidance toward December would only confirm the pricing, which is not the same as being harmless for crypto: bitcoin did not rise with stocks on Monday, and a hawkish Fed that sends stocks lower could still drag it down. That is a possibility, not a forecast.
Coinbase on Thursday: the first hard numbers from the trading side
Coinbase reports third-quarter results after the US close on Thursday 29 October, and CoinDesk’s week-ahead calendar lists an estimate of minus $0.10 per share. Strategy reports the same evening, with $8.34 listed. Thursday is crowded: the advance estimate of third-quarter GDP (forecast 3.2%, after 2.2%) and September PCE inflation come out at 12:30 UTC, the ECB decides on rates with its deposit rate at 2.50%, and Mastercard and ICE report before the open. A Coinbase quarter far from that estimate, in either direction, would give the first company-level numbers on crypto trading in the quarter that ended in September.
Price levels in play
Below the market, the first marker is the $79,100 to $79,300 zone tested three times since Saturday. Under it sit Coindaro’s $78,000 max-pain level for Friday’s expiry, Glassnode’s true market mean near $77,600 (CryptoSlate) and then Galaxy’s $76,540 tripwire, which is about a weekly close, not an intraday print. Above, the ETF holders’ average cost near $81,500 comes first, then $82,500, the floor CoinDesk said bitcoin lost last Thursday and needs to get back above, the $84,856 high of 21 October on Coinbase, and the $87,000 area of Cowen’s “fakeout” next to the $87,490 yearly open.
| When (UTC) | Event | Why it matters for crypto |
|---|---|---|
| Mon 26 Oct, after 20:00 | Monday’s US spot ETF flows | First read on whether Thursday-Friday selling carried on |
| Tue 27 Oct | US durable goods, new home sales; Galaxy Digital, PayPal, SoFi before the open, Robinhood after the close | Crypto-exposed earnings start |
| Wed 28 Oct, 18:00 and 18:30 | FOMC statement, Warsh press conference; Bank of Canada; Alphabet and Microsoft results | December hike odds near 80% |
| Thu 29 Oct, 12:30 | Q3 GDP, September PCE, jobless claims; ECB decision; Mastercard and ICE before the open, Coinbase and Strategy after the close | Inflation data and exchange earnings on one day |
| Fri 30 Oct, 08:00 | Deribit monthly expiry; Bank of Japan decision and Outlook Report; Employment Cost Index | Largest open strikes are calls at $90,000 to $100,000 |
| Tue 3 Nov | US midterm elections | Policy risk and the 10-year yield |
What would prove the base reading wrong
Monday’s evidence for a base is narrow but specific. The dip at the open came on heavy volume, yet open interest rose, funding went back to its baseline rather than below zero, DVOL stayed between 38 and 39 and nobody rushed to buy puts. A forced unwind looks different: open interest drops, funding turns negative and implied volatility jumps. None of that happened on Monday.
Four things would undo that reading this week. The first is a break below $79,100 on Coinbase with open interest falling at the same time, the signature that Monday lacked. The second is Monday’s or Tuesday’s ETF data showing another day like Thursday 22 October, when $635.5 million left. The third is DVOL leaving its 38 to 39 band before Wednesday, a sign that traders are paying up for protection. The fourth is bitcoin falling with stocks after the Fed statement, after declining to rise with them on Monday.
The reading would also go stale in the other direction. A move back above the ETF holders’ average cost near $81,500 would turn the question from whether the floor holds to whether $82,500 can be regained. Neither path is a forecast; these are the markers we will check in the next sessions.
The oil line is the wild card that runs under all of it. Brent near $110 at 16:10 UTC against $116.72 on Friday depends on headlines from Tehran, not on a calendar. Monday’s ETF figures, due after the 20:00 UTC close, are the next number to check.