Bitcoin Steadies Near $77,367 After Binance Shock as Fear Grips Crypto

Crypto markets steadied in the early hours of October 31 after Thursday’s sell-off, with total market capitalisation edging up 0.5% to $2.7 trillion on $116 billion of 24-hour trading volume. Bitcoin traded at $77,367.35, up 0.6% over 24 hours, while Ethereum led the major coins with a 2.2% rise to $2,241.43, according to CoinGecko data recorded at 01:30 UTC. Bitcoin dominance slipped to 57.7% and Ethereum held 10.2% of the market — a modest pause rather than a decisive rebound.

The caution is easy to explain. The reported Binance breach is still the market’s main story: on-chain trackers say the attacker has since moved 120 million TRX, worth about $38.78 million, splitting it across many wallets, while the US Secret Service is working with partners including Circle to freeze and recover stolen funds. The episode lands in a year dominated by one threat actor — Chainalysis puts suspected North Korea-linked attacks at nearly 89% of 2026 hacking losses, averaging $185.65 million per attack. That is why the Fear and Greed Index stayed flat at 30, in Fear, down from 51 a week ago and 74 a month ago.

October’s wider picture makes the fragility clearer. Bitcoin is down 8.4% for the month and trading in a $76,000–$77,000 band, after an early-month rally that peaked between $80,000 and $84,000 faded and intraday lows near $76,500 appeared. If the month closes in the red, it will be a second consecutive negative October, after a roughly 3.9% fall in October 2025 — breaking a pattern in which Bitcoin rose in 10 of the last 13 Octobers since 2013, averaging near 19%. Traders are now focused on a tight technical zone: the 100-day moving average and the 0.382 Fibonacci retracement level both cluster around $76,000–$76,200, and a failure there could trigger stop-loss selling and fresh volatility.

The institutional side of the story is just as tight. Strategy, the world’s largest corporate bitcoin holder, reported 848,517 BTC bought for $64.02 billion as of October 25 — an average cost of about $75,446 per coin — and valued the stack at $68.90 billion using an October 23 price of $81,200. By the early hours of October 31, with Bitcoin near $76,988, that cushion had shrunk to roughly $1.31 billion, or just 2.0% above cost, so a fall of only about $1,542 per coin would put the whole position under water. That is not distress by itself: the company also reported $5.07 billion in US dollar reserves, covering 3.4 years of preferred dividends and debt interest, with net leverage down to 2.4% from 8.4%. Still, its ledger shows net reductions of 6,948 BTC between June 1 and August 10, so the old assumption that it never sells no longer holds.

Why this matters goes beyond one weekend’s prices. A market can steady on price while staying fearful on sentiment, and that split usually resolves one way or the other — either buyers return once the breach investigation brings clarity, or the $76,000 support zone breaks and forces another round of selling. What to watch next is the Binance recovery news, whether Bitcoin holds $76,000–$76,200 into the month’s close, and whether Strategy’s position stays above its $75,446 average cost. For readers learning to navigate weeks like this, our forex tools include position-size calculators for planning risk, and the free forex course covers support, resistance and risk basics that apply to crypto too. (Not financial advice.)