Bitcoin has fallen below $80,000 on Thursday, marking its lowest daily close in 17 days and triggering nearly $1.8 billion in liquidations across the cryptocurrency market. According to CoinGlass data, crypto liquidations hit $1.707 billion over two days (October 7-8), with $1.19 billion coming from long positions alone. Bitcoin's price touched an intraday low of $80,400 before recovering to around $82,200, leaving it down 1.93% for the month. The cryptocurrency remains down about 8% year to date and remains more than 35% below its record high of above $126,000 reached last October. BTC was the top-trending ticker on Stocktwits at the time of writing, with retail sentiment in 'bearish' territory over the past day.
Ethereum led the liquidation wave with $356 million in outflows over 24 hours, despite Ether's market value being less than one-fifth of Bitcoin's. This represents about six times the damage compared to Bitcoin's $298 million liquidations, with Ether taking roughly $1.2 million for every $1 billion of market value versus Bitcoin's $180,000. Ether fell more than 3% to about $2,490, while Bitcoin lost about 1%. The largest single wipeout was a nearly $20 million Ether position on Hyperliquid, a decentralized exchange for leveraged trading. Solana bets accounted for another $71 million, XRP for $34 million, and NEAR for $25 million, with every other token combined adding about $119 million. Recent data shows Ethereum's derivatives market may be set up for another squeeze, with over $177 million in ETH long positions liquidated on October 8th marking the largest long squeeze since early June.
U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded their largest single-day outflow in more than a year, with nearly $485 million leaving the funds on October 7. BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) led the selling, recording $207.7 million in outflows, while Fidelity and Ark Invest's Bitcoin ETF products also recorded withdrawals of more than $100 million each. The heavy selling came just one day after the BTC ETFs recorded $118.8 million in net inflows, highlighting the volatile nature of current market conditions. Meanwhile, U.S. spot Ethereum ETFs recorded $160.9 million in net outflows on the same day, pointing to broader selling across crypto investment products. According to SoSoValue data, U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs posted $487 million in outflows, the most since late June, as the pressure came largely from outside crypto factors including Fed rate hike expectations and rising Treasury yields.
The minutes of the September 15-16 FOMC highlighted the reason behind the 25 bps interest rate hike last month, with the primary reason being insufficient progress in lowering inflation. Fed staff do not expect inflation to return to 2% by 2029, and have raised their inflation forecast for 2026-2028. Crypto analyst Axel Adler Jr. noted that after the Fed minutes were released, Bitcoin prices held at around $83.4k for a while before falling to $82.8k just 10 hours later. The price decline began before the minutes were released, and the tightening stance the release confirmed likely reinforced the bearish view. The Bitcoin Regime Score remained in negative territory at -22, with a reading below -30 signaling a shift in favor of sellers.
The current sell-off lands two days before the anniversary of October 10, 2025, when a crash wiped out about $19 billion in trades. Bitcoin peaked near $126,200 that week and has not returned since. Thursday's wave was the largest long-side wipeout in 90 days on CoinGlass, with more than $600 million liquidated in a single hour - the biggest hourly total in a month. However, the total is about one-nineteenth of last year's figure, so far the data does not match fears of a 10-10 crash repeat. The anticipated 'Uptober' has gotten off to a rocky start, with spot ETF BTC flows already recording negative $401.9 million in October. The pressure came largely from outside crypto, including Fed minutes showing most officials saw another rate hike as likely appropriate by year-end, with the 10-year Treasury yield sitting near 5.3% and Brent crude trading near $105. Bitcoin now sits about $800 below $83,000, the level where Thursday's selling began, with the next macro test following on October 14 when US September inflation data is due.
