Bitcoin (BTC) Faces the $80,000 Test After September CPI Reads 3.7%

Update 23:27 UTC: CME FedWatch put the probability of a 25-basis-point increase at the Oct. 28 Federal Reserve meeting at 53.7%, up from 22.1% a day earlier, with the odds of a further hike in December near 50%.

September CPI Prints 3.7%

Which side of the $80,000 to $84,000 band Bitcoin (BTC) settles on is the question the September inflation report has left open. Bitcoin (BTC) price traded near $81,724 in our live monitoring, down 1.78% over 24 hours, after the daily session opened at $83,169.01, climbed to a high of $84,146.72 and touched a low of $81,588.88. The catalyst came from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, whose CPI release for September showed consumer prices up 0.6% on the month, taking annual inflation to 3.7% from 3.4% in August and past the 3.6% forecast. Gasoline, up 9.1%, accounted for more than half of the monthly increase, while core prices excluding food and energy rose 0.3% over the month and 2.6% over the year. Rate expectations shifted hard on the print: CME FedWatch put the odds of an October interest rate increase at roughly 44% to 49% after the release, against 22% beforehand. The two-year Treasury yield moved to about 4.9% and the 10-year close to 5.3%, and U.S. equities slipped in sympathy, with the S&P 500 down 0.6% and the Nasdaq down 0.8%. Crypto moved harder than equities on the day, with Bitcoin's 1.78% loss over 24 hours against sub-1% declines for both indexes. The weekly frame showed a 2.22% decline from its opening level, leaving both timeframes below $82,000 after the latest attempt to hold above $84,000 failed. The retreat ends, for now, a run that carried the daily chart from the low $60,000s in August through the upper $70,000s in September and toward $87,000 before this slide back into the low $80,000s. Whether a hawkish repricing alone can push the market through its floor, or whether the pullback simply retraces that advance, is what neither the data nor the chart yet answers.

A Short From $82,800

Trader Lennart Snyder positioned for the move in advance, opening a short near $82,800 through margin trading after the 9:30 a.m. New York open and naming $81,400 and $80,300 as his first downside targets. In his Oct. 14 commentary he wrote that repeated rejections around $84,000 justified the entry, and he extended the plan to roughly $77,000, a final take-profit area for a remaining slice of the position, if Bitcoin (BTC) loses $80,000. Longs, he added, hold little appeal for now: he wants either a forceful break above $84,000 or a drop below $80,000 before re-engaging on quality longs. The chart work around the trade splits down the middle. The daily Supertrend line, a trend-following tool that tracks support and resistance with a stop band, still sits below the market at $79,663.52, roughly 2.5% under the latest spot reading, so the structure that carried the advance from the August lows is technically intact. Aroon points the other way, with Aroon Up at 14.29% against Aroon Down at 57.14%, meaning the most recent 14-period low is fresher than the most recent high. Weekly references frame the wider battlefield, with Murrey Math marking $75,000 as a strong pivot and $87,500 as the lower edge of its trading range, weekly ADX at 27.16 and the week's range so far spanning $81,033.66 to $84,352. Derivatives maps tilt the upside: data on liquidation clusters shows the brightest concentrations between $84,400 and $84,700, above spot and the $84,000 threshold, with smaller bands near $81,500, $81,000 and $80,300 to $80,500 and further build-up around $79,700 to $80,000, putting Snyder's $80,300 target directly over a visible liquidation band. Anyone mapping the wider picture of Bitcoin technical analysis will find both the intact structure and the fresh momentum weakness inside the same $80,000 to $84,000 band.

Before Wednesday's slide, the same corridor had already produced heavy two-sided liquidations. Market analyst CryptoReviewing reported on X that Bitcoin's drop on Oct. 12 from $84,300 to $80,900 — the later reading on that day, superseding the earlier $80,000 level — wiped out roughly $770 million in long positions, and that the subsequent reclaim of $84,000 then forced about $160 million in shorts out of the market. In that same Oct. 12 analysis, the analyst maps substantial liquidation liquidity across $79,000 to $83,000, with a larger concentration stacked between $84,000 and $88,000. Franklin Templeton Research chief investment strategist Jeff Schultz said the hotter print could fuel rate-hike expectations and dollar strength, weighing on risk assets. Attention now shifts to the Oct. 15 producer price index and the FOMC meeting on Oct. 27 to 28, with the $81,000 support test and any recovery of $84,000 set to decide the short-term direction.

The derivatives toll from Wednesday's drop came into sharper focus by mid-afternoon. Coinglass data as of 1:30 p.m. Eastern put liquidations over the past 24 hours at $331.03 million, with longs carrying roughly 82% of the losses and close to 88,886 traders wiped out. Bitcoin (BTC) accounted for $69.95 million of that, 80.9% of it long positions, while Ethereum followed at $64.33 million. Binance hosted about 49% of exchange liquidation volume, and the largest single position closed was a $7.03 million ETH long. The unwind adds a harder read on the same corridor the earlier Oct. 12 figures described, and it lands one day after Strategy chairman Michael Saylor told Bloomberg Television on Oct. 13 that the bear market had ended, calling the rebound from just under $60,000 the start of a new bull cycle.

Later on Thursday, the wider market closed lower alongside Bitcoin. CoinMarketCap data put global crypto market capitalization at $2.74 trillion, down 2.14% on the day, with 24-hour volume falling 7.4% to about $82.09 billion and Bitcoin dominance at 59.9%. Ethereum slid 3.03% to $2,429.44, XRP lost 3.34% to $1.32, Solana dropped 2.96% to $104.11 and BNB fell 1.68% to $729.19, though Tron bucked the trend with a 1.31% gain to $0.3328. Some analysts kept a longer-term view: Michaël van de Poppe argued investors may sell Bitcoin too early if they expect yields to keep slowing, and pointed to gold's strength as grounds for long-term upside. Near term, the market watches whether $81,000 to $82,000 holds, with a reclaim of $83,000 by 15:50 UTC seen as a level where buyers could return.

The deeper rate repricing came through as the session wore on. CME FedWatch put the probability of a 25-basis-point increase at the Oct. 28 Federal Reserve meeting at 53.7%, up from 22.1% a day earlier, with the odds of a further hike in December near 50%. Econoday analyst Theresa Sheehan pushed back on the October case, arguing the weak September employment data points to a hold this month and a tilt toward December. In the bond market, the 10-year Treasury yield touched 5.329%, within about 0.03 points of its highest level in 24 years, and gold climbed to $4,079 an ounce. Economist Robin Brooks said the global bond sell-off had calmed before the report but is burning again. Bitcoin hovered around the $82,500 to $83,400 corridor as traders judged whether it holds as support.

@LennaertSnyder · X post

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Positioning and the $81,022 Floor

Positioning still leans long despite the dip. Our composite support scoring rates the strongest floor at $80,759.47, 92 out of 100, with spot at $81,289.93 sitting about $530 above it, while the resistance above at $84,209.29 scores 86 out of 100. Perpetual funding stays slightly positive at 0.0043%, and long accounts outnumber short accounts 1.83 to 1, or 64.7% long, so the crowd is tilted long even as the MACD signal has turned bearish with RSI at 44.59. Sentiment sits in neutral territory, with the Fear & Greed Index at 53, and open interest at $15.7B against a 24h volume of $25.8B. A decisive reclaim of $84,209.29, or a clean loss of $80,759.47, would settle what the latest data left open (as of 05:11 UTC).