Uptober Pulls a Red October: $BTC Slides Below $81K as Spooky Season Bites 🦇

Bitcoin fell to $80,427 on Thursday, its lowest level since early September, and was trading around $81,125 after a 2.67% 24-hour drop that erased nearly half of the cryptocurrency's September gains. The move broke with the pattern crypto traders call "Uptober," when Bitcoin has historically delivered its strongest monthly returns, and mirrors a similar trend-breaking performance in the same month last year.

The selloff extended across the crypto market, with Ethereum ($ETH) falling close to $2,400 and every top-ten asset posting losses over a seven-day window. Zcash dropped 11% in a day, NEAR Protocol fell 16%, Pump.fun shed 11% and Venice Token lost 10%, while Dogecoin and Chainlink were each down double digits on the week. Total crypto market capitalization stood at $2.89 trillion on Friday, up 2.1% on the day but still below the $3 trillion level it held a week earlier when Bitcoin was pressing against its yearly high.

Spot Bitcoin ETFs shed $484.9 million on Oct. 7, the worst single-day outflow since June 25, followed by another $244 million on Thursday, according to Decrypt's ETF tracker. That two-day total of roughly $729 million erased about 81% of the $595.3 million that had flowed in over the prior nine sessions and cut the 10-day net to $110.4 million. Spot Ethereum funds have bled money for eight straight sessions, losing $640 million over that stretch, while futures funding rates on $ETH flipped negative midweek for the first time in months.

Macro headwinds compounded the pressure, with Wall Street retreating from record highs as Brent crude hovered near $100 a barrel and U.S. Treasury yields held near their highest since 2002. Minutes from the most recent Federal Reserve meeting showed most officials expect another rate hike before year-end. Tom Lee said Bitmine will stop buying Ethereum once it owns 5% of supply, roughly 100,000 coins away, removing a buyer that had appeared every week since June 2025.

Technical indicators reflected a market cooling after an overbought phase. The daily Average Directional Index (ADX) read 40.7 on Thursday, down from 42.8 a day earlier, with the buying-pressure line (+DI) still ahead of the selling-pressure line (-DI) but slowly narrowing. The Relative Strength Index (RSI) fell to 45.8 from 52.5, slipping below the 50 line that separates bullish from bearish momentum, while the 50-day exponential moving average (EMA) remained above the 200-day EMA, a configuration traders read as an intact long-term uptrend. The Squeeze Momentum Indicator remained on, signaling compressed volatility. Bitcoin has traded sideways between roughly $83,000 and $87,000 for more than two weeks after the $87,354.33 peak on Sept. 21 and sits about 5.6% below that level.

Analysts pointed to several support levels traders are watching. Luke Deans, Senior Research Associate at Bitwise Europe, told Decrypt that the $83,000 region "combines the average ETF cost basis with the prior technical higher-high threshold and has been tested repeatedly over recent weeks," adding that "through this lens, Bitcoin could fall materially from current levels and still remain within what we would consider a constructive risk-on structure." Deans identified lower support near $77,000 at the True Market Mean and $74,000 at the Short-Term Holder Cost Basis, with the 200-day moving average at $72,000. Ananda Banerjee, Founder and Principal Quantitative Researcher at Charlie Quant Lab, said the strongest support sits at $77,000, citing on-chain metrics that show a notable cluster of Bitcoin supply was acquired at that level.

The Fear & Greed Index fell to 56, a neutral reading, down from 71 on Oct. 2, and the crypto rebound on Friday was modest. On Myriad, a prediction market owned by Decrypt's parent company Dastan, users put a 79% chance on Bitcoin ending the week above $82,000 and just a 28% chance of it topping $84,000, while a separate market gave 67% odds that Bitcoin trades at or below $80,000 at some point in October.