About half a billion dollars left U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs on October 7. Liquidations were overwhelmingly long, and the rebound to $82,000 stopped on levels traders were already watching. Trump's post eased the strike fear after that money had already left.
Decrypt's ETF tracker puts the October 7 outflow at $484.9 million, the biggest one-day loss since June 25. BlackRock's IBIT accounted for $207.7 million of it, and Fidelity's FBTC for $105.1 million. The funds opened October with $321.6 million of inflows over four sessions. Through October 7, they were $163.3 million in the red for the month. Cumulative net inflows are still $57.8 billion.
Oil and bonds were already leaning on the session. The 30-year Treasury yield was about 5.7%, the highest since 2002, and Brent crude was around $100. Stocks had slid from record highs.
Ship attacks around the Strait of Hormuz have been running at least one a day since October 2, which is a reason for oil to stay expensive. Expensive oil feeds inflation, and that keeps the Fed hawkish and bond yields high. The Fed raised rates in September for the first time since 2023, and minutes released Wednesday show most officials expect another hike before year end. Those minutes set no date for the next increase. CME FedWatch puts the odds of an October hike at 19.4%. Myriad puts them at 17%. The committee meets October 27-28 and again December 8-9. Bitcoin had risen in October for six years running until last year, when the month finished down 3.69%.
CoinGlass put liquidations at roughly $429 million over 24 hours, with 87.5% of them long. Bitcoin traded as low as $81,749.83 on Thursday, after a peak of $86,978 earlier in the week.
The turn was a Truth Social post. At 12:17 p.m. ET on October 8, President Donald Trump wrote, "We will not be attacking Iran at any time prior to the Midterm Elections to be held in the United States on November 3rd." He called the discussions productive and said the blockade stays in force. Axios had reported the day before that the Pentagon told U.S. Central Command to prepare to resume major combat operations in Iran. CoinDesk said that report lifted WTI crude from $89 to $93.20. Selling had been running for about 24 hours. It ran out near $80,300, and Bitcoin rebounded to $82,000. WTI was about $90.69 after the post. Ether, XRP, and Solana trimmed Thursday's losses along with it.
A cryptography scare was in that selloff too. Earlier in the week, Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake floated "bunker mode," a shift of coins into fresh addresses whose public keys have not been exposed on-chain. The idea is to limit the damage if AI-accelerated math weakens the elliptic-curve cryptography behind Bitcoin and Ethereum before quantum computers can break it. Coinbase's top cryptographer, Yehuda Lindell, called the warning FUD and said there was no evidence those assumptions had been broken. Dragonfly's Haseeb Qureshi called it a very sober call. Vitalik Buterin said the risk from AI-accelerated math is real, and he pointed to lattices.
Wednesday's ETF money was already gone before Thursday's low. The Pentagon report and the crude spike sat in between, and the post is what halted the slide. Giottus CEO Vikram Subburaj called $81,000 the immediate level to watch. A break there could take the market toward $80,000 and then on-chain support near $77,200. He said fresh purchases should be staggered, and that high leverage should wait until Bitcoin recovers $83,300 and then $85,500 with stronger ETF inflows. Purvang Mashru, lead analyst at BitDelta, said a sustained reclaim of $82,000, with ether above $2,500 and narrower altcoin losses, would stabilize the setup. A break under $80,316, he said, is where downside risk picks up.
Keep the leverage light, and don't treat the post as an all-clear. Relief can halt a panic. It doesn't restore the positions that were forced out, and it doesn't refill the funds. Add risk when the price is holding.
Photo: ImagePerson / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0.
