BTC, ETH prices slip and rebound as Kospi index slides on AI-related concerns: Crypto Markets Today

South Korea’s equity benchmark plunged 5.5% on Tuesday, leaving the index roughly 38% below its June all-time high. Crypto also saw sharp swings, with bitcoin BTC$83,160.00 falling below $81,000 before rebounding above $84,000 and settling just above $83,000. Ether ETH$2,517.48 fell as low as $2,400.

The Asian selloff reflected mounting concerns about the AI trade. Broadcom CEO called current AI investing “casino-like”, knocking investor confidence and reported advances in memory-chip technology at China’s CXMT raised concerns of stronger competition for established chipmakers.

Samsung Electronics (005930) and SK Hynix (00060) led the declines, falling 7% and 10%, respectively.

Investors are also positioning ahead of Wednesday’s U.S. CPI report, another potential source of volatility. Headline inflation is forecast at 3.6% year over year, with core inflation at 2.5%. A headline reading in line with that forecast would mark an acceleration from the previous month’s 3.4%.

Meanwhile, third-quarter earnings season gathers pace, with JPMorgan Chase (JPM), Goldman Sachs (GS) and Citigroup (C) scheduled to report later today, offering a fresh assessment of consumer demand, credit conditions and corporate activity.

Derivatives positioning

• Traders are being forced out, not piling in: 24-hour futures volume is $212 billion, up 66% from $126 billion yesterday. Open interest (OI), the dollar value of all open contracts, is $143.4 billion, down 1.58%. Liquidations rose 284% to $813 million. Heavy trading, shrinking OI and forced closures mean leverage is being flushed out, not added.
• Sellers still have a slight edge in aggressive trading: The 24-hour long/short taker volume ratio is 48%/52%, a reversal from yesterday, when longs accounted for 52% of the flow. Taker volume counts trades where someone pays up to get filled immediately, so it shows who is more eager. Buyers are closer to parity, but not in control.
• SPCX and SNDK are the busiest futures in crypto, though they are small: They are the most-traded contracts in the past 24 hours. According to Coinglass, 24-hour volume is up 700% in SPCX and 271% in SNDK. OI in both is still just under $1 billion, significantly less than the majors. The surge in volume is mostly fast trading, not a build up of positions.
• SNDK OI rises as the price falls: OI rose nearly 9% alongside a 7% price drop. Because OI is counted in dollars, the lower price already shrinks it, so open contracts rose roughly 17%. That is a net inflow of new positions into a falling market, which usually means fresh shorts, though some may be dip buyers.
• SK Hynix is another TradFi play: OI is rose 18% as the price fell 8%, so open contracts rose about 28%. The risk-off mood in South Korean stocks is clearly reflected in onchain markets.
• Leverage continues to unwind from bitcoin and ether futures: OI in both has dropped 2% or more even as prices are largely flat to negative over 24 hours. Part of that drop is simply the lower price, so the net outflow of positions is smaller than 2%, but it is still an outflow. The same is true for XRP, SOL and HYPE.
• ZEC and NEAR’s OI drops along with their prices: The ZEC price has slumped more than 7% in 24 hours and OI has fallen 11%, which implies only about 4% fewer open contracts. A day ago, the 7% rise in OI on a 6% price gain meant only about a 1% inflow, so the reversal is bigger than the build. NEAR shows a similar pattern. Annualized funding rates for both are still positive at around 7%, down from 10% for ZEC yesterday, so longs are paying to stay in. OI-adjusted cumulative volume delta (CVD), which tracks whether aggressive buyers or sellers dominate, is negative for both.
• SUI sellers are leading the market: SUI has the most negative CVD, leading the trend in most majors, including bitcoin and ether. NEAR, which had the second-most positive reading yesterday, has flipped. Aggressive selling is broad. Annualized perpetual funding rates are minus 30% or more. That means shorts pay longs. A crowded short side can reverse fast if prices rise.
• Options traders are not rattled by the liquidations: Bitcoin and ether’s implied volatility indexes remain pinned near year-to-date lows, pointing to continued market calm. Implied volatility is the options market’s forecast of future price swings.
• Traders keep buying downside protection in bitcoin: Put options dominate the most-traded 24-hour rankings in BTC for the second day. A put gains value when the bitcoin price falls, so heavy put volume points to hedging. For ether, flows are mixed, although the leader is the $2,500 put expiring on Oct. 16, with large volume that leaves second- and third-largest positions well behind.

Token talk

• Starknet STRK$0.08835 has fallen more than 17% over the past 24 hours to $0.08, reversing part of a recent rally that saw its value nearly double. The rise came as the network is weighing leaving Ethereum to become a standalone, quantum-resistant layer-1.
• LayerZero ZRO$2.0071 has also reversed its recent rally, losing 14%. STRK and ZRO are the two biggest losers among the top 100 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization, while NEAR fell 11%, showing the pullback extends beyond the recent outperformers.
• Blur (BLUR) has slid 33% after the NFT marketplace announced plans to close its website interface and stop matching new Blend loans on Nov. 12. Its underlying marketplace contracts will remain operational, and the token will retain governance over the protocol’s fee switch.
• Autheo (THEO) plunged 92% following a suspected exploit on Base. According to PeckShield, an attacker minted 19 million tokens without authorization, exchanged them for 700 ETH, worth about $1.76 million, and bridged the proceeds to Ethereum.
• Stacks STX$0.4124 bucked the decline with an 11.4% rise. The move comes as the network expands its bitcoin-staking program.