Bitcoin Slips Below $80,000 as Tech Earnings Miss and a Hawkish Fed Hold Rattle Crypto

Bitcoin slipped back below $80,000 during Thursday’s Asian trading session, reversing a two-day rebound and dragging the wider crypto market down with it. The largest cryptocurrency fell from above $81,700 to around $79,600 before catching a bid near $80,100, a drop of roughly 1.4% on the day. Ether lost 1.7% to about $2,322, the CoinDesk Memecoin Index fell 3.4%, and the pain was worst at the speculative edges: AI-linked tokens such as NEAR slid 7.8% and Bittensor 3.1%, while DeFi tokens including Raydium dropped 8.9%. Only a handful of tokens, led by Tron with a small gain, escaped the red.

The selloff did not start in crypto at all — it started in big tech earnings. Alphabet reported third-quarter revenue of $127.58 billion against $127.93 billion expected, operating income of $40.58 billion versus $43.16 billion forecast, and earnings per share down to $2.12 from $2.87 a year earlier; its shares fell about 10% in pre-market trading. In Seoul, Samsung’s semiconductor division reported a 15-fold surge in operating profit to 106.5 trillion won, yet still missed the average analyst estimate of 108.5 trillion won, sending its shares down more than 5% and South Korea’s Kospi 1.2% lower, with Nasdaq-100 futures down 1.1%. When the world’s biggest tech names disappoint on the same night, crypto — which trades around the clock with no closing bell — becomes the first place the risk-off mood shows up.

The Federal Reserve added to the caution rather than relieving it. On Wednesday the central bank held its benchmark rate at 3.75%–4%, but two officials dissented in favour of an immediate quarter-point increase, and Chair Kevin Warsh declined to signal what comes in December — a combination markets read as a hawkish hold. ING still expects another increase in December, and BlackRock’s Rick Rieder urged investors to avoid a “heroic directional call” on rates. For crypto, the transmission is straightforward: as long as the Fed sounds open to higher rates, inflation-adjusted bond yields stay attractive, and money has less reason to chase speculative assets.

The derivatives market took the brunt. About $356 million of crypto futures positions were liquidated over 24 hours, with bets on rising prices accounting for $205 million of the total; Bitcoin futures saw $94 million in liquidations and ether futures $72 million. The details matter: futures trading volume jumped 21.8% to $198.8 billion while open interest fell 1.9%, meaning traders were closing positions in a hurry rather than opening fresh shorts, and funding rates cooled from the day before — the classic signature of a leveraged washout, not a new bearish consensus. Against that, the spot market told a calmer story: US spot Bitcoin ETFs took in $137 million on Wednesday, a third straight day of inflows totalling $423.7 million, almost all of it through BlackRock’s IBIT, while ether ETF outflows eased for a third straight session, from $88.6 million on Monday to $21.4 million on Wednesday.

What to watch next: whether Bitcoin can reclaim $80,000 and hold it, the September PCE inflation report — the Fed’s preferred gauge — due later, and Thursday’s after-close earnings from Amazon and Intel, which will test whether the tech selloff spreads or stalls. Options traders are hedging both ways: the most traded Bitcoin call on Deribit is the $82,500 strike expiring October 30, while ether puts remain pricier than calls. The bigger lesson of the day is the split inside crypto itself: patient ETF accumulation on one side, leveraged traders being flushed out on the other. A durable recovery probably needs both halves to agree — fresh inflows into Bitcoin and ether funds together with a price reclaim. Until then, sharp dips on tech headlines are the market’s default setting. For readers learning how macro news moves markets, our forex section explains the transmission from rates to risk assets, and the forex tools page has position-size calculators for planning risk before trading. (Not financial advice.)