By Francisco Rodrigues (All times ET unless indicated otherwise)
Cryptocurrency prices ghosted downward over the last 24 hours, haunted by a sell-off in equities after major U.S. tech firms Meta and Microsoft raised their AI investment projections, prompting overspending concerns.
Bitcoin was little changed, dropping 0.3% to around $110,000 on the 17th anniversary of the publication of its white paper, while ether fell 1.3% to about $3,840. The not-so-spooky move comes as traders assess the shifting outlook for interest rates and inflation on both sides of the Atlantic.
The European Central Bank appears to be pausing its rate-cutting cycle, while the Federal Reserve signaled an interest-rate cut in December is “not a foregone conclusion.” On Polymarket, the perceived odds of three U.S. rate cuts this year slid from 86% to 64%.
Crypto exchange-traded fund flows turned negative, with spot bitcoin ETFs seeing $600 million in outflows so far this week and ETH ETFs registering $184.3 million outflows, according to SoSoValue data.
The ETFs are “showing signs of investor caution,” while the Fear & Greed Index slides deeper into “fear” territory, Bitget COO Vugar Usi Zade said in an emailed statement.
“This transition certainly reflects growing macro anxiety, fueled by persistent inflation, elevated interest rates, and uncertainty around the Fed’s policy path,” Zade wrote. “However, despite the pullback, on-chain activity remains resilient, and the structural case for crypto exposure is still intact.”
Zade pointed to long-term factors like the bitcoin halving due in 2028 and evolving global regulation as potential catalysts for long-term rallies, even though “timing is always uncertain.”
At Coinbase, third-quarter earnings beat expectations. The exchange posted $1.9 billion in revenue and confirmed its layer-2 network, Base, is now profitable, thanks to higher ETH prices and rising transaction volume, showing onchain adoption keeps growing.
Meanwhile, derivatives positioning shows bitcoin traders leaning on income strategies in the $105K–$115K range, according Wintermute Strategist Jasper De Maere.
“Over the next few weeks, markets will likely remain sensitive to macro data releases — including Fed commentary, inflation prints, and labor market signals — as well as any resolution to the ongoing government shutdown,” Bitget’s COO added. “These factors may drive sentiment swings, but they don’t alter the longer-term trajectory.”
Beware of ghouls, and stay alert!
What to Watch
For a more comprehensive list of events this week, see CoinDesk’s “Crypto Week Ahead”.
- Crypto
- Oct. 31: The 17th anniversary of the release of the Bitcoin white paper by pseudonymous Bitcoin inventor Satoshi Nakamoto.
- Macro
- Oct. 31, 8 a.m.: Brazil Sept. Unemployment Rate Est. 5.5%.
- Oct. 31, 8:30 a.m.: Canada Aug. GDP MoM Est. 0%.
- Earnings (Estimates based on FactSet data)
Token Events
For a more comprehensive list of events this week, see CoinDesk’s “Crypto Week Ahead”.
- Governance votes & calls
- No major governance votes or calls.
- Unlocks
- Oct. 31: Immutable (IMX) to unlock 1.24% of its circulating supply worth $13.07 million.
- Oct. 31: to unlock 1.71% of its circulating supply worth $13.79 million.
- Token Launches
Conferences
For a more comprehensive list of events this week, see CoinDesk’s “Crypto Week Ahead”.
Token Talk
By Oliver Knight
- The altcoin market is heading into the weekend lower than a week ago, with ether losing 2.5% at $3,850.
- Many tokens broke through key levels of support in the period, dragging the average down. The CoinDesk 80 Index, a measure of the smallest of the top 100 tokens, fell 3.8% while the CoinDesk 20 dropped 1.3%.
- Doublezero (2z), plasma , gate token (GT) and , all declined by between 15% and 21% after extending losses on Friday.
- A few tokens bucked the trend, notably in-vogue privacy coin , which is up by 5% on Friday to add to a weekly gain of 47%.
- The TRUMP memecoin also performed well after it emerged that the company behind the token plans to buy fundraising platform Republic. TRUMP rose 35% over the past seven days.
- The altcoin market outlook now depends on whether ether can cling on to its current level of support at $3,700, an area that provided three bounces in October.
- A break below that level would indicate weakness and a potential macro trend reversal, which is likely to be reflected across the entire altcoin market.
Derivatives Positioning
- The bitcoin futures market is in a state of consolidation, with no clear trend emerging.
- Open interest (OI) fell slightly to $26.16 billion, though it remains elevated.
- Funding rates across most venues are little changed, indicating low general demand. There is, however, isolated bullish demand evident on specific platforms, like Deribit, where rates spiked to an annualized 8%.
- The three-month annualized basis, meanwhile, remains subdued in the 4%-5% range, confirming that the basis trade is currently unappealing.
- In options, there is a shift toward near-term neutral-to-bearish sentiment, despite maintaining a positive structural bias. The implied volatility (IV) term structure continues to show a near-term backwardation before moving into long-term contango.
- While the one-week 25-delta skew remains positive at 8%, indicating a premium is still paid for short-term calls, this conviction is being challenged by the 24-hour put/call volume, which has flipped to a 56%-43% in favor of puts, suggesting near-term downside hedging or speculation is currently dominating trading activity.
- Coinglass data shows $879 million in 24 hour liquidations, with a 86-14 split between longs and shorts. BTC ($303 million), ETH ($193 million) and others ($79 million) were the leaders in terms of notional liquidations. The Binance liquidation heatmap indicates $111,000 as a core liquidation level to monitor, in case of a price rise.
Market Movements
- BTC is up 2.19% from 4 p.m. ET Thursday at $109,880.54 (24hrs: -0.19%)
- ETH is up 2.4% at $3,846.88 (24hrs: -1.21%)
- CoinDesk 20 is up 2.36% at 3,604.98(24hrs: -1.68%)
- Ether CESR Composite Staking Rate is up 9 bps at 2.93%
- BTC funding rate is at 0.004% (4.3526% annualized) on OKX
- DXY is unchanged at 99.53
- Gold futures are unchanged at $4,013.00
- Silver futures are down 0.55% at $48.35
- Nikkei 225 closed up 2.12% at 52,411.34
- Hang Seng closed down 1.43% at 25,906.65
- FTSE is down 0.43% at 9,718.26
- Euro Stoxx 50 is down 0.35% at 5,679.50
- DJIA closed on Thursday down 0.23% at 47,522.12
- S&P 500 closed down 0.99% at 6,822.34
- Nasdaq Composite closed down 1.57% at 23,581.14
- S&P/TSX Composite closed up 0.11% at 30,178.98
- S&P 40 Latin America closed down 0.99% at 2,999.83
- U.S. 10-Year Treasury rate is up 1 bps at 4.103%
- E-mini S&P 500 futures are up 0.66% at 6,900.75
- E-mini Nasdaq-100 futures are up 1.18% at 26,188.75
- E-mini Dow Jones Industrial Average Index are unchanged at 47,683.00
Bitcoin Stats
- BTC Dominance: 59.98% (0.16%)
- Ether to bitcoin ratio: 0.03500 (-0.37%)
- Hashrate (seven-day moving average): 1,138 EH/s
- Hashprice (spot): $44.62
- Total Fees: 2.86 BTC / $311,977
- CME Futures Open Interest: 138,115 BTC
- BTC priced in gold: 26.1 oz
- BTC vs gold market cap: 7.36%
Technical Analysis
- The ETH-BTC one-week rate looks likely to trade within a range.
- There was a rejection at core weekly resistance back in August (around the time of the ether digital-asset treasury trade) and since then, the RSI has been declining (still not neutral).
- It’s likely that ETH-BTC will trade within the current weekly resistance and support meaning the risk-return on ether over bitcoin is unlikely to be attractive for the time being.
Crypto Equities
- Coinbase Global (COIN): closed on Thursday at $328.51 (-5.77%), +4.83% at $344.38 in pre-market
- Circle Internet (CRCL): closed at $122.71 (-6.85%), +3.24% at $126.68
- Galaxy Digital (GLXY): closed at $34.13 (-6.31%), +2.84% at $35.10
- Bullish (BLSH): closed at $49.95 (-4.98%), +1.18% at $50.54
- MARA Holdings (MARA): closed at $17.76 (-5.93%), +2.65% at $18.23
- Riot Platforms (RIOT): closed at $21.09 (-4.87%), +4.74% at $22.09
- Core Scientific (CORZ): closed at $20.74 (-0.14%), +3.38% at $21.44
- CleanSpark (CLSK): closed at $17.69 (-6.35%), +2.77% at $18.18
- CoinShares Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF (WGMI): closed at $56.71 (-3.31%), +2.50% at $58.13
- Exodus Movement (EXOD): closed at $23.73 (-3.81%), -1.56% at $23.36
Crypto Treasury Companies
- Strategy (MSTR): closed at $254.57 (-7.55%), +6.77% at $271.80
- Semler Scientific (SMLR): closed at $24.61 (-5.29%), +1.89% at $25.08
- SharpLink Gaming (SBET): closed at $12.77 (-6.17%), +3.29% at $13.19
- Upexi (UPXI): closed at $4.26 (-6.17%), +4.46% at $4.45
- Lite Strategy (LITS): closed at $1.95 (-6.25%)
ETF Flows
Spot BTC ETFs
- Daily net flows: -$488.4 million
- Cumulative net flows: $61.34 billion
- Total BTC holdings ~1.35 million
Spot ETH ETFs
- Daily net flows: -$184.2 million
- Cumulative net flows: $14.48 billion
- Total ETH holdings ~6.78 million
Source: Farside Investors
While You Were Sleeping
- China, Canada Leaders Meet First Time Since 2017 to Reset Ties (Bloomberg): On APEC’s sidelines in South Korea, Xi Jinping invited Prime Minister Mark Carney to visit China signaling groundwork for renewed engagement after years of strained ties.
- Riot Platforms Shares Jump Pre-Market After Posting Unexpected Profit on Record Revenue (CoinDesk): Net income was $104.5 million, or 26 cents vs. an expected 12-cent loss, on $180.2 million in revenue. Also, Riot began a 112-megawatt Corsicana, Texas data center buildout.
- Protect Bitcoin Exposure With Ether Shorts: Research Firm (CoinDesk): With Bitmine share issuance slowing and options and search data tilting against ETH, 10x says ether is the weaker leg, making short ETH a hedge for BTC longs.
- ‘HOPIUM’ for Bitcoin Price Bulls (CoinDesk): One ray of hope for BTC is that the 200-week simple moving average is about $54,750, still well below bitcoin’s 2021 peak near $70,000.
- T3 Financial Crime Unit, Backed by Tron, Tether, TRM Labs, Has Now Frozen $300M in Assets (CoinDesk): In its first year, the unit coordinated cross-border seizures with police on five continents, targeting pig-butchering rings and laundering networks, and launched an exchange-led program for real-time freezes.
- Trump’s Vow to Resume Nuclear Tests Leaves Experts Puzzled (The Wall Street Journal): With no details from the White House, even the U.S. nuclear commander nominee can’t say if Trump means underground blasts, low-yield experiments or missile trials, risking renewed testing by rivals.