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Bitcoin slid to $79,711 on Thursday before snapping back above $82,000, as a hotter-than-expected U.S. inflation print on Wednesday and an even hotter producer price report the next morning drove a roughly $948 million wave of long liquidations across crypto derivatives. The Consumer Price Index climbed 3.7% year over year in September, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said, against the 3.6% economists had forecast; core CPI rose 2.6% versus 2.5% expected. Thursday's Producer Price Index jumped 6.3% annually versus 5.5% expected, the largest monthly wholesale gain since March 2022, with wholesale gasoline up 20.3%. Oil stayed elevated with Brent crude near $104 a barrel and WTI around $92.67, well above year-ago levels amid the ongoing U.S.–Iran conflict. Per CoinGlass data, 177,440 traders were forcibly closed in 24 hours, with longs accounting for $858.96 million, or 90.6%, of the $948.22 million total; ether led the list at $282.03 million in liquidations, followed by roughly $200 million in bitcoin longs, and the largest single order was a $12.03 million BTC long on Binance force-closed at $80,208.96. South Korea's KOSPI dropped as much as 8% and triggered circuit breakers on Wednesday before rebounding about 3% by Friday morning; Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix each fell roughly 8% at one point.

The CPI shock sent rate-hike expectations higher. The odds of an October move briefly jumped to roughly 47% on CME FedWatch from 22% before the report before settling at 29.3% on Thursday, with Myriad and Polymarket pricing it at 28%; Polymarket puts a December hike at 79%. The 2-year Treasury yield rose about 10 basis points to roughly 4.9% and the 10-year climbed to about 5.3% near 24-year highs. U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs lost $484.9 million on Oct. 7 (the worst day since June), $261.5 million on Oct. 14 and $150.5 million on Oct. 15, per SoSoValue, putting October net flows roughly $400 million in the red; Glassnode puts the average ETF cost basis near $81,500–$82,300, a level BTC briefly traded beneath. Bitmine Immersion Technologies bought another 12,532 ETH worth about $32 million this week, bringing holdings to 6,028,946 ETH, or 4.9% of supply, with chairman Tom Lee saying the firm will halt purchases once it hits the 5% mark roughly 100,000 coins away.

On the charts, Bitcoin remains range-bound between about $79,800 and $87,500. Bitwise Europe's Luke Deans highlighted the $83,000 zone as a key pivot combining the ETF cost basis with prior highs; Ananda Banerjee of Charlie Quant Lab pointed to $77,000 as the strongest on-chain support cluster, while Deans sees lower levels at $74,000 on short-term holder cost basis and $72,000 on the 200-day moving average. The Average Directional Index sits at 25.5 on the daily, just above the 25 trend-confirmation threshold, with sellers (DI-) leading buyers (DI+) according to one daily reading; other daily readings show the opposite, illustrating how quickly the tug-of-war is flipping. The 50-day exponential moving average sits above the 200-day EMA (around $80,407 versus $75,759), a golden cross configuration traders treat as an intact long-term uptrend; the Relative Strength Index reads around 48.9–53.4, neutral. On Myriad, the prediction market operated by Decrypt's parent company Dastan, BTC touching $80,000 this month traded at 54%, $77,500 at 43% and an October high of $87,500 at 31%, down from 45% on Tuesday.

Traders are watching remarks from Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh, who is due to speak at the IMF and World Bank meetings in Bangkok on Friday, with the Federal Reserve's next FOMC meeting set for Oct. 27–28. Polite Capital's Daniela Hathorn told Decrypt that Bitcoin is still trading like a risk asset rather than a reliable hedge, while CoinShares' James Butterfill argued that if rising long-end yields reflect debt sustainability concerns rather than growth, BTC may begin trading "less like a conventional risk asset and more like an alternative to government-issued money." Wincent's Paul Howard said institutional investors are more likely to add derivatives protection than reduce underlying exposure. Friday's bounce lifted BTC back near $82,500, ETH toward $2,450, SOL about $106, XRP up 2–3%, and Zcash 8–11% higher on the day to roughly $1,190–$1,230, even as the spot ZEC ETF shed about $15 million and ether funds lost roughly $60 million for a ninth straight day of withdrawals. The Crypto Fear & Greed Index sits at 53–56, neutral, well below August's "extreme greed" reading of 82.