BTC Price Drops as Market ‘Flushes Excess Leverage:’ Crypto Daybook Americas

By Francisco Rodrigues (All times ET unless indicated otherwise)

Bitcoin BTC$108,619.43 dropped to around $107,000 after spending several days recovering from last week’s sell-off that wiped out billions in leveraged positions. The downturn is now being interpreted by analysts as a market reset rather than a breakdown.

On-chain data from Glassnode suggests the recent volatility flushed out excess leverage without damaging long-term market structure. Funding rates have plunged, futures open interest is down and realized losses indicate traders are cutting risk rather than abandoning positions entirely.

Yet to Samer Hasn, a senior market analyst at XS.com, bitcoin is “trapped within a bearish structure” as it forms successive lower highs and lower lows.

“For any meaningful reversal to take hold, the asset needs to reclaim and hold solidly above the $111K threshold, which is a level that would help rebuild the confidence required for trend stabilization,” Hasn wrote in an email. “Until then, market rallies are likely to be viewed as temporary corrective moves within a broader downtrend.”

Still, some crypto market participants see this as a buying window. BitMine, led by Fundstrat’s Tom Lee, committed $800 million to its already massive ether treasury, while Blockchain.com has held talks to go public via a U.S. SPAC deal.

Similarly, Ripple-backed Evernorth Holdings signed a SPAC deal to list on Nasdaq as it targets over $1 billion to create the “largest public XRP treasury.”

Meanwhile, macro shifts are supporting risk assets. Equity prices are rising as trade tensions between the U.S. and China alleviate and nervousness over the U.S. regional bank credit risks ease. Gold is down more than 2% to $4,265 as capital rotates back into risk.

The technical setup appears to be what’s dragging the wider crypto market down, with the CoinDesk 20 (CD20) index retreating 3.56% in the last 24 hours and all members trading lower.

“The broader crypto market continues to experience a deep phase of deleveraging, with traders stepping back as volatility rises and confidence fades in sustaining higher levels,” Hasn noted.

“Should this pattern persist, it may later serve as a foundation for a more resilient bull recovery once macro and liquidity conditions improve,” he wrote, echoing his colleague Linh Tran. Stay alert!

What to Watch

For a more comprehensive list of events this week, see CoinDesk’s “Crypto Week Ahead”.

• Crypto
  • Oct. 21, 11:35 a.m. ET: Galaxy Digital (GLXY) is hosting a Q3 2025 post-earnings AMA on X.
• Macro
  • Oct. 21, 8:30: Canada Sept. Inflation Rate. Headline YoY Est. 2.3%, MoM Est. -0.1%. Core YoY (Prev. 2.6%), MoM (Prev. 0%).
  • Oct. 21: The Federal Reserve Board hosts the Payments Innovation Conference in Washington, D.C. Watch live.
• Earnings (Estimates based on FactSet data)
  • Oct. 21: Galaxy Digital (GLXY), pre-market.

Token Events

For a more comprehensive list of events this week, see CoinDesk’s “Crypto Week Ahead”.

• Governance votes & calls
  • GnosisDAO is voting on a proposal to fund ProbeLab with $105K to develop detailed performance and security metrics for the Gnosis Chain P2P network. Voting ends Oct. 21.
  • 1inch DAO is voting to remove the 5% Unicorn Power staking requirement for Fusion resolvers. Voting ends Oct. 21.
• Unlocks
• Token Launches

Conferences

For a more comprehensive list of events this week, see CoinDesk’s “Crypto Week Ahead”.

Token Talk

By Oliver Knight

• South Korean exchanges Upbit and Bithumb listed a number of lower market cap tokens on Tuesday, prompting a series of explosive moves to the upside.
• Upbit notably added F$0.01644 with won and dollar trading pairs. SynFutures is a decentralized derivatives exchange that hopes to rival HyperLiquid and Aster.
• F climbed more than 50% after the listing before giving back some of the gains. Trading volume increased by 669% to more than $200 million.
• Bithumb, meanwhile, listed ZORA and RECALL. The former rallied by more than 10% while RECALL moved in line with the wider market.
• The increases following the listings bucked the altcoin market trend on Tuesday, with several assets facing double-digit moves to the downside. The CoinDesk 80 Index fell 4.5% in the past 24 hours.
• CAKE and ETHFI both lost 10% while ETH, BNB and SOL all dropped 4%-5% as negative sentiment crept back into the market.
• Traders are now analyzing whether the market’s bounce over the weekend formed a lower high, which is indicative of a bearish trend and potential bear market reversal following fresh record highs less than a month ago.

Derivatives Positioning

• The bitcoin futures market is showing a measured recovery, with open interest increasing to $26.06 billion as traders gradually re-engage.
• The three-month annualized basis remains stable within the neutral-to-bullish 5%-6% range. Significantly, funding rates have flipped back to mostly neutral or positive, indicating that the short-side conviction seen previously has cleared. OKX is currently leading this shift with a high positive rate of 7.51%.
• The BTC options market is strongly bullish, underpinned by the increasing expectation of future price swings. The implied volatility term structure is upward sloping, signaling that the market expects volatility to increase over time.
• Concurrently, the 25-delta skew is rising across all timeframes, and now exceeds 11.86%. This high positive skew confirms that traders are paying a large premium for upside exposure — call options — reflecting significant conviction for a sustained rally, despite the near-neutral 24-hour put-call volume, which is 49%-51% in favor of puts.
• Coinglass data shows $320 million in 24 hour liquidations, with a 76%-24% split between longs and shorts. BTC ($88 million), ETH ($85 million) and others ($33 million) were the leaders in terms of notional liquidations.
• The Binance liquidation heatmap indicates $112,300 as a core liquidation level to monitor, in case of a price rise.

Market Movements

• BTC is down -2.98% from 4 p.m. ET Wednesday at $107,816.26 (24hrs: -2.62%)
• ETH is down 3.3% at $3,867.69 at $2,607.45 (24hrs: -3.84%)
• CoinDesk 20 is down 3.6% at 3,566.33 (24hrs: -3.46%)
• Ether CESR Composite Staking Rate is up 2 bps at 2.84%
• BTC funding rate is at 0.0035% (3.7931% annualized) on Binance

• DXY is up 0.27% at 98.85
• Gold futures are down 1.91% at $4,276.00
• Silver futures are down 5.43% at $48.60
• Nikkei 225 closed up 0.27% at 49,316.06
• Hang Seng closed up 0.65% at 26,027.55
• FTSE is up 0.21% at 9,423.22
• Euro Stoxx 50 is unchanged at 5,678.39
• DJIA closed on Monday up 1.12% at 46,706.58
• S&P 500 closed up 1.07% at 6,735.13
• Nasdaq Composite closed up 1.37% at 22,990.54
• S&P/TSX Composite closed up 1.02% at 30,416.44
• S&P 40 Latin America closed up 1.11% at 2,916.62
• U.S. 10-Year Treasury rate is down 1.6 bps at 3.972%
• E-mini S&P 500 futures are down 0.12% at 6,765.75
• E-mini Nasdaq-100 futures are down 0.11% at 25,276.25
• E-mini Dow Jones Industrial Average Index are down 0.18% at 46,827.00

Bitcoin Stats

• BTC Dominance: 59.6% (unchanged)
• Ether to bitcoin ratio: 0.03587 (-0.36%)
• Hashrate (seven-day moving average): 1,133 EH/s
• Hashprice (spot): $46.49
• Total Fees: 2.93 BTC / $324,314
• CME Futures Open Interest: 144,835 BTC
• BTC priced in gold: 25.6 oz
• BTC vs gold market cap: 7.23%

Technical Analysis

• After rallying into the upper $111,000s yesterday, BTC was rejected from the 20-week exponential moving average (EMA) and is now trading around $107,900.
• For bulls to maintain momentum, a daily close above the 200-day EMA and a weekly close above $107,400 would help confirm the swing failure pattern established in early September.
• On the downside, the 50-week EMA, currently around $100,200, remains the next major area of support on the higher timeframe.

Crypto Equities

• Coinbase Global (COIN): closed on Monday at $343.78 (+2.31%), -1.54% at $338.50 in pre-market
• Circle Internet (CRCL): closed at $130.81 (+3.42%), -0.95% at $129.57
• Galaxy Digital (GLXY): closed at $39.65 (+4.95%), +2.3% at $40.56
• Bullish (BLSH): closed at $58.76 (+2.96%), -1.77% at $57.72
• MARA Holdings (MARA): closed at $20.73 (+5.93%), -2.03% at $20.31
• Riot Platforms (RIOT): closed at $22.01 (+9.89%), -1.95% at $21.58
• Core Scientific (CORZ): closed at $18.81 (-1%), +3.14% at $19.40
• CleanSpark (CLSK): closed at $20.4 (+4.48%), -1.08% at $20.18
• CoinShares Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF (WGMI): closed at $59.77 (+2.64%)
• Exodus Movement (EXOD): closed at $26.13 (+5.11%), -0.92% at $25.89

Crypto Treasury Companies

• Strategy (MSTR): closed at $296.61 (+2.33%), -1.94% at $290.85
• Semler Scientific (SMLR): closed at $23.65 (+2.03%)
• SharpLink Gaming (SBET): closed at $14.79 (+3.14%), -2.16% at $14.47
• Upexi (UPXI): closed at $5.72 (+5.93%), -2.97% at $5.55
• Lite Strategy (LITS): closed at $1.98 (+5.32%)

ETF Flows

Spot BTC ETFs

• Daily net flows: -$40.4 million
• Cumulative net flows: $61.47 billion
• Total BTC holdings ~1.35 million

Spot ETH ETFs

• Daily net flows: -$145.7 million
• Cumulative net flows: $14.47 billion
• Total ETH holdings ~6.78 million

Source: Farside Investors

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