Bitbull Warns Traders of 'Circle of Death' as Price Reverses From $85,000

Bitbull’s ‘Circle of Death’ Warning

Less than a week after nearly touching $85,000, Bitcoin (BTC) has handed the move back and sits just above the $80,000 line, and the traders who bought the recovery absorbed the damage first. On-chain analytics describe a futures market still heavily exposed to further swings, which is exactly the setting the trader Bastian Keller warns about. Keller, better known in the market as Bitbull, spoke at TOKEN2049 Singapore earlier this month and argued that trading psychology decides more outcomes than any price call. His most contested point goes after standard beginner advice: practice on a demo account first. Simulated trading, he said, manufactures false confidence because nothing real is at stake. “When it’s come then to real money, yeah, it’s completely different,” he said. “Emotions coming in, FOMO coming in.” His fix uses uncomfortably small numbers: begin with $10 or $50 of actual capital so the pressure of a genuine loss arrives early, while demo accounts remain useful only for learning a platform’s mechanics. Keller’s own record taught the lesson. He traded foreign exchange before entering crypto in 2018, was scammed along the way, and distilled that stretch into what he calls the trading “circle of death”: a loss, an immediate re-entry to win it back, then a larger position when that fails. “Then you’re going to your revenge trading, you lose more... and then everything is gone,” he said. Leverage sharpens the spiral, because a position many times the size of the deposit can be erased by a modest move. He steers traders away from constant scalping toward slower, HODL-style positioning, and his first rule is blunter still: “First of all, don’t trust everyone.”

Futures Build-Up Before Fed Decision

Derivatives data explains why the pullback hit leveraged accounts across the wider Bitcoin market so hard. Glassnode’s weekly market report shows futures open interest climbing from $36.5 billion to $37.5 billion over the past week even as spot buying weakened, so a larger pool of capital stood behind each swing than seven days earlier. Open interest that grows into a falling market usually means traders are adding to positions rather than closing them, which raises the cost of being wrong. Bullish holders kept paying elevated funding rates while prices fell, and demand for downside protection through options rose at the same time. The combination leaves a fragile tape: a sudden rally can pull in aggressive buying, while the next reversal can force liquidations of overleveraged positions. Retail conviction has not fully faded; some commentators still frame sub-$80,000 levels as a generational buying opportunity, a call the last week has tested. The calendar stacks more risk on top. The Federal Reserve delivers its interest-rate decision on Wednesday, October 28, and the United States midterm elections follow on November 3, with analysts expecting volatility around both; either date can move the dollar and risk appetite within hours, which is when forced liquidations cluster. Keller is also attacking the behavioral side with software. Through TradeMania, the platform he founded, his team is building tools that analyze a trader’s history and return AI-generated feedback on recurring mistakes, letting users track their trades and question an AI agent directly. The platform runs a commercial partnership with the exchange Bitunix, which Keller described as its main exchange partner. No independent evidence yet shows the feedback tool improves returns. His closing warning covered influencers, automated signals and market predictions alike.

Bitcoin now trades near $80,350, up 0.4% over the past 24 hours, and the tape sits between the two strongest levels on our support and resistance scoring. The $79,410 support carries a score of 89 out of 100, drawn from the lower Bollinger band, the S1 pivot and the Supertrend line, while the $81,614 resistance scores 80, where the EMA 20 meets the SMA 50. Perpetual funding has cooled to 0.0097%, so the long bias the on-chain report flagged earlier in the week has eased, though our trend read is still a downtrend with the RSI at 42.74, after the coin ended a third straight week lower. For the market to keep this corridor, bids at $79,410 have to hold; a daily close above $81,614 would be the first sign the structure is turning back up.