Uptober Rolls Over, Spooktober Stands Up: Bitcoin's Worst Week Since June Tests the True Believers 🪦

Bitcoin shed roughly 7% over the past week as the cryptocurrency's October started in the red instead of the historically green "Uptober" pattern, with $BTC sliding to $80,427 on Thursday before recovering above $82,000 by Friday. The decline has erased nearly half of Bitcoin's September gains and left the largest cryptocurrency trading around $82,837 on Friday, up 1.38% on the day after a daily candle open at $81,711 and a range between $81,553 and $83,443, per CoinGecko data. The Crypto Fear & Greed Index dropped to 56, a neutral reading, down from 71 on October 2 and well off the August high of 82.

The selloff was driven by a hotter-than-expected U.S. inflation print. The Consumer Price Index rose 0.6% in September and 3.7% year over year, up from 3.4% in August and above the 3.6% forecast, per the Bureau of Labor Statistics, with gasoline prices jumping 9.1% in a single month. Core CPI climbed 2.6% against a 2.5% forecast. Thursday's Producer Price Index followed with a 6.3% annual gain versus 5.3% expected, the largest monthly jump since March 2022, as wholesale gasoline prices surged 20.3%. Odds of a Federal Reserve rate hike at the October 27-28 meeting spiked to nearly 50% on Polymarket before retreating to about 26%-30%, while CME FedWatch put the probability at 29.3% on Thursday, up from 17.7% a week earlier. The 10-year Treasury yield climbed to about 5.3%, near 24-year highs, and Brent crude hovered near $104 a barrel. "Stronger U.S. inflation data has renewed concerns that interest rates will stay higher for longer," Vikram Subburaj, CEO of India-based exchange Giottus, told CoinDesk.

Spot Bitcoin ETFs compounded the pressure with their worst day since June 25, shedding $484.9 million on Wednesday, followed by $244.13 million in outflows on Thursday, per SoSoValue and Decrypt's ETF tracker. A further $261.5 million exited on Wednesday per another tally, and $150.5 million left on October 14, according to CoinDesk. U.S. spot $BTC ETFs drew just $5 million on Friday. Ether funds have bled money for eight straight sessions, losing roughly $640 million over that stretch, while the spot $ZEC fund lost about $15 million on Thursday, its fifth outflow this month. Across derivatives, 177,440 traders were liquidated in 24 hours for $948.22 million, with longs accounting for $858.96 million or 90.6%, per CoinGlass. Ethereum led with $282.03 million in liquidations and Bitcoin followed at just over $200 million, marking the third-heaviest day for long liquidations in 90 days.

Strategists have mapped out the next levels if the slide deepens. "From a market-structure perspective, the $83,000 region remains an interesting level," Luke Deans, Senior Research Associate at Bitwise Europe, told Decrypt. "This area combines the average ETF cost basis with the prior technical higher-high threshold and has been tested repeatedly over recent weeks." Ananda Banerjee, Founder and Principal Quantitative Researcher at Charlie Quant Lab, told Decrypt he sees strongest support at $77,000 based on on-chain cost-basis clusters. Deans agreed that the True Market Mean is near $77,000 and identified lower support at $74,000 with the Short-Term Holder Cost Basis, while the 200-day moving average sits at $72,000. On prediction market Myriad, operated by Decrypt's parent company Dastan, users put a 67% chance that $BTC trades at or below $80,000 at some point in October, with 40% odds for $77,500 and 24% for $75,000. Stephen Wundke, strategy and revenue director at Algoz, told Decrypt: "Without a clear catalyst to move things higher I fear we are range bound with $BTC between $76,000 and $83,000 for the rest of October."

Macro headwinds extended beyond U.S. inflation. South Korea's KOSPI plunged 5.5%-8% across sessions, triggering circuit breakers at one point, as Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix fell as much as 7%-10% on concerns over AI-related valuations and competition from Chinese memory-chip producers. WTI crude traded near $92.67, holding most of Monday's sharp recovery from below $90, and the Dollar Index held near 102.50, the highest since April 2025. Bitcoin tore back to $82,500 within two hours of dipping under $80,000, with the intraday low hitting about $79,711 before buyers stepped in at roughly $79,800, cutting through the $80,400 floor buyers had defended twice the prior week. "Bitcoin has slipped to the bottom of the $81,000 to $87,000 range it has held since late September, and Glassnode flags $80,000 as the level to watch," Iliya Kalchev, analyst at Nexo, told Decrypt. Traders are now looking to Wednesday's U.S. CPI report and remarks from Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh at the IMF and World Bank meetings in Bangkok on Friday for the next directional signal.