Bitcoin Slides Below $82,000 as Liquidations Top $1 Billion

Bitcoin spent another rough day under pressure, falling below $82,000 and changing hands at about $81,750, according to CoinGecko. At one point it sank to roughly $80,400. That’s a sharp step down from $86,000 earlier this week, and another move lower after yesterday’s slide under $84,000.

The trigger stack is familiar by now. Oil jumped after an overnight attack on a tanker off Qatar, with Brent briefly pushing above $105 a barrel. Then came the Federal Reserve minutes from September, where most members saw another rate increase before year-end as likely. Higher Treasury yields did the rest, making risky assets like crypto look less appealing.

Money is also leaking out of the ETF channel. U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs saw about $487 million in outflows on Wednesday, the biggest daily outflow in weeks, according to SoSoValue. At the same time, wallets tied to the U.S. government moved 12,267 Bitcoin, worth about $1 billion, from assets seized after the Bitfinex hack to new addresses. The day before, about 3,200 Bitcoin were sent to Coinbase Prime deposit addresses, which traders read as a possible sale.

The leverage cleanup was brutal. CoinGlass said about $1 billion in positions were forcibly closed over 24 hours, and more than 90 percent of them were bets on higher prices. Ether, Solana, Cardano, Zcash and NEAR all fell harder than Bitcoin. Ether dropped about 4 percent to roughly $2,460, while Zcash lost 12 percent and NEAR as much as 14 percent.

Analysts had been watching the $82,000 to $83,000 area as support, and that floor is gone. Lacie Zhang of Bitget Wallet had warned that Bitcoin could slide faster toward $80,000 if that level broke. Traders on Kalshi are already betting on $78,000 this month, and the old October cheer is looking tired: Bitcoin is down about 3 percent so far, even though it has gained more than 18 percent on average in October since 2013.