Geopolitics Drops, Bunker Mode Chops: $BTC Bounces Off $80K Like It Owes Rent 🏠

Bitcoin recovered to around $82,500 on Friday after President Donald Trump said the United States would not attack Iran before the Nov. 3 midterm elections, easing geopolitical fears that had pushed the cryptocurrency to a low near $80,300 on Thursday. "We will not be attacking Iran at any time prior to the Midterm Elections to be held in the United States on November 3rd," Trump said in a Truth Social post published at 12:17 p.m. ET, adding that the U.S. blockade would remain "in full force and effect."

The trigger for Thursday's sell-off was a report from Axios on Oct. 7 that the Pentagon had instructed U.S. Central Command to prepare for resuming major combat operations in Iran. Crude futures tied to WTI rose from $89 to $93.20 before falling sharply after Trump's post, trading at $90.69 at the time of writing; Brent crude slipped about 1% to around $103 a barrel. Equity futures also moved higher, with Nasdaq 100 futures up 0.83% since midnight and S&P 500 futures adding 0.44%.

Bitcoin $BTC was trading near $82,365 during the latest price check, according to CoinGecko data, with 24-hour trading volume of approximately $40.43 billion and a market capitalization of $1.65 trillion. Ether $ETH $2,495.57 slid 9% over the week to around $2,500, and Bitcoin remained about 4% lower than at the same time the previous Friday. XRP, solana and several other cryptocurrencies trimmed Thursday's losses, while Starknet's STRK jumped 33% after the network said it is considering becoming a standalone layer-1 blockchain to achieve full quantum resistance by 2027.

The broader-market bounce was led by smaller tokens, with the CoinDesk 80 up 2.2% since midnight UTC, more than twice the gain in the CoinDesk 5. The recovery has yet to undo Thursday's damage, however, with the CoinDesk 100 still 2.2% lower over 24 hours and DeFi tokens down nearly 4%. U.S.-listed bitcoin, ether and zcash ETFs posted outflows on Thursday, leaving XRP funds as the only crypto products to take in money.

Concerns over a so-called "bunker mode," floated earlier in the week by Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake, also drew pushback. Coinbase cryptographer Yehuda Lindell dismissed the concerns as "FUD," saying there was no evidence that the elliptic-curve assumptions behind bitcoin and ether had been broken. Bitcoin futures open interest slipped 1.9% over 24 hours to $27.1 billion, according to Coinalyze, and has barely moved since Thursday afternoon's flush even as bitcoin recovered to around $82,500, suggesting the rebound came without fresh leverage. Coinalyze's aggregated long/short ratio stood at 1.85, or about 65% long.