Bitcoin's Staircase Hits a Stairmaster: Oil, Yields, and $BTC Below $83K 🪜

Bitcoin ($BTC) fell as low as $82,776.30 during Wednesday's Asian trading session before recovering to around $83,178.54, down roughly 2.76% on the day. The drop came as Iran stepped up attacks on tankers in the Strait of Hormuz, pushing Brent crude above $101 a barrel, lifting Treasury yields and strengthening the dollar. The U.K. Maritime Trade Operations agency has logged at least one attack per day in the Strait of Hormuz or the Gulf of Aden since October 2, and on Monday Iran's Revolutionary Guard ordered a tanker entering the strait to turn around or risk attack. Bitcoin traded near $86,600 on Tuesday before sliding as low as about $83,840 intraday, briefly breaking under the $84,000 level that FxPro chief market analyst Alex Kuptsikevich said would signal "a victory for the bears."

Losses ran deeper across the broader market, with the CoinDesk 80 down nearly 4% over 24 hours against 2.5% for the CoinDesk 5. DeFi tokens fell almost 6% and the Memecoin Index slid around 5%. Dogecoin ($DOGE) led losses among major tokens at 5% to about 9 cents, ether ($ETH) dropped 3.5% to about $2,610, and XRP fell nearly 3% to about $1.46. BNB, SOL, ZEC and TRX each slipped between 1% and 2.5%, while HYPE dropped nearly 4% to about $91, according to CoinDesk data. Optimism's OP fell 10% to lead the CoinDesk 100 lower after Pudgy Penguins' Abstract became the second Ethereum layer-2 network to shut down in a week. Only a handful of tokens including SAND, PUMP and STX managed to rise since midnight UTC.

Liquidations climbed sharply as leveraged positions unwound. Roughly $969 million in crypto positions were liquidated over the past 24 hours, including $644.47 million in longs, according to CoinGlass. Another tally put liquidations at $547 million, up 235% on the day, with ether positions accounting for $174 million. The 24-hour taker long/short ratio stood at 48% to 52%, with shorts accounting for over 52% of taker volume, as crypto futures open interest slipped 1% to $152.60 billion and trading volume rose 16% to $182.85 billion. Bitcoin futures open interest rose to 660,000 BTC, recovering from an 11-month low of 626,000 BTC on Sept. 30 but still well below the record high of 800,000 BTC set earlier this year.

Despite the slide, analysts said Bitcoin's months-long bullish stair-step pattern remains intact. "The October 7 decline does not invalidate Bitcoin's stair-step rise," Vikram Subburaj, CEO of Indian crypto exchange Giottus, told CoinDesk. Since July, Bitcoin has climbed in a series of flat ranges, each higher than the last, moving from roughly $62,000–$67,000 in mid-July to about $76,000–$81,500 from late August to mid-September before establishing a new range of $83,000–$87,000. "After moving above $81,500, Bitcoin established a new range of roughly 83,000-87,000. If $83,000 holds, it would show that sellers cannot force the price back into its previous trading band," Subburaj said. Kuptsikevich pegged support somewhat higher, around $84,000, with a break below opening a path to $80,000. The four-hour Relative Strength Index sat at 32.2, signaling oversold conditions, while the daily ADX reading of 42.8 indicated the broader bullish trend remains intact.

Minutes from the Federal Reserve's September meeting, released Wednesday, showed all 19 officials backed last month's quarter-point rate increase, with most seeing another as likely appropriate by year-end. "The market had already priced in that hike, so traders are now looking at whether the notes sound patient or still point to one more increase before the end of the year," Dan Khus, chief analyst at LVRG Research, said in an email. The 30-year Treasury yield climbed to 5.71%, its highest since 2002, and the 10-year rose to 5.32% ahead of a $22 billion 30-year bond auction later Thursday. Demand from U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs held up going into the drop, with the funds taking in $119 million on Tuesday, their fourth day of inflows in the last five sessions, according to SoSoValue. Bitcoin is still trading about 40% above the roughly $59,500 it fetched in late June, and Myriad traders gave 67% odds that Bitcoin touches $80,000 in October.