Bitcoin Drifts Toward $80,000 as ETF Outflows Persist and Mid-Sized Holders Keep Buying

Bitcoin is drifting toward its most-watched line in the sand. At about 05:00 UTC on Saturday, October 24, the world’s largest cryptocurrency traded near $80,831 — 0.33% below the previous day’s close of $81,096 and roughly 36% below its $126,156 all-time high. The broader market moved with it: Ethereum slipped 0.7% to about $2,374, Solana fell 1.6% to $102.11, XRP dropped 2.2% to $1.29, and Dogecoin eased 1.3%, while BNB held flat near $737 and TRON edged up 0.1%. Total crypto market value stood near $2.81 trillion on about $64.91 billion of 24-hour trading volume, and the session’s $466.78 million in liquidations hit 179,599 traders — nearly 69% of them long.

The headline flow story is institutional caution. US spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded a second straight day of net outflows on October 23, losing $137.9 million across all twelve funds, with BlackRock’s IBIT accounting for $110.3 million and Fidelity’s FBTC $31.8 million. The exit was far smaller than the $635.6 million outflow the day before, and the five-session week still ended in the black — a net $301.2 million in, led by IBIT’s $565.7 million. That split matters: the week’s biggest buyer became the day’s biggest seller, which reads less like a verdict on Bitcoin and more like end-of-week position trimming.

Beneath the ETF headline, the on-chain picture points the other way. CryptoQuant supply data shows coins held in 1-to-10 BTC chunks grew by 12,342 BTC over the 30 days to October 23, while the 10-to-100 BTC band added 27,207 BTC — a combined gain of about 39,549 BTC, more than any other size group. The very largest chunks, above 10,000 BTC, shrank by 36,824 BTC over the same month, but the 1,000-to-10,000 band grew by 29,487 BTC, a near-offset that looks more like large holders splitting big outputs into smaller ones than a wholesale exit. The honest caveat is that these bands track coin-chunk sizes, not named owners, so they show where coins sit, not who bought them. Still, the direction is clear: while ETF money paused, mid-sized balances kept accumulating through the dip.

Why this matters: the cross-currents explain why Bitcoin has spent the week pinned between $80,000 and $83,000. Trading firm QCP Capital attributed part of the selling pressure to worries about AI financing spilling over from equities into crypto — a reminder that Bitcoin now trades like a long-duration risk asset, rising and falling with rate expectations and tech sentiment rather than on crypto news alone. Market odds of a Fed rate increase in October had fallen to about 15% by October 19, which helped the earlier rebound, but conviction remains thin: Bitcoin sits below its 20-day average of $82,850 and its 50-day average of $81,787, though still above its 200-day average near $72,860, and its RSI of 45.24 sits below the neutral 50 line without signalling panic.

What to watch next: the $80,000 level itself — analysts at STS Digital are watching an $80,000-to-$86,000 channel — and next week’s macro calendar, with the Federal Reserve’s decision due October 28 and third-quarter GDP plus September PCE inflation data on October 29. If $80,000 holds through those prints, the mid-sized accumulation story gains weight; if it breaks, the next wave of leveraged longs — who absorbed almost 69% of the session’s liquidations — could turn a drift into a flush. For readers tracking the level, our forex tools page has position-size calculators and the free course covers risk planning for exactly these choppy stretches. (Not financial advice.)