Bitcoin (BTC) Slips to $81,100 as Short-Squeeze Rally Fades

From $84,739 High to $81,100

Bitcoin (BTC) price sits near $81,100 on Thursday, down 4.3% over the past 24 hours, after the short-squeeze rally that carried it to $84,327 on Tuesday gave ground. The largest proof-of-work asset by market value rose 1.93% that session and touched $84,739 intraday, about $260 short of the round $85,000 mark, before sellers took the level back. It had begun the week pinned there, a zone revisited when Bitcoin held near $81,000 as Trump ruled out Iran talks. The upside tracked a strong session in U.S. equities. SpaceX, Elon Musk's launch and satellite group, reported third-quarter revenue up 161% year over year and said its AI operations had expanded ninefold. That print drove the stock up 9.40% and helped lift the Nasdaq Composite 1.23% to 26,749.2; at about 1 p.m. local time the index stood 324.41 points above the prior close. The S&P 500 rose 0.61% to 7,759.68, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average added 0.40% to 52,706.5. Musk also floated a special committee to weigh a merger between SpaceX and Tesla, and Tesla gained more than 3%, while AMD and Nvidia climbed roughly 3% and 2% respectively. Netflix fell more than 5% after its annual revenue outlook missed market expectations. Crescat's chief market strategist read the SpaceX results as evidence the AI industry still has room to grow, while cautioning against excessive optimism and capital concentration in the theme. Risk appetite of that breadth normally pulls crypto along, and on Wednesday it did: Bitcoin (BTC) held above $84,000 early in the session as equity futures rose in the wake of the earnings release. That equity-crypto linkage now sits against the 1929 comparison Bloomberg's McGlone has drawn, with U.S. equities at 2.5x GDP.

$243 Million Liquidated, 77% Shorts

Derivatives data suggests forced buying did much of the work behind the gain. Aggregate liquidation records show $243.04 million in positions closed out over the trailing 24 hours at the time of the move, with 77.4% of that, or $188.14 million, coming from short positions. Bitcoin accounted for $78.42 million of the total, roughly 94% of it short positions, and 71,223 traders were liquidated in all. Closing bearish bets mechanically generates buy orders, which is why the short-side share of that toll reads as the rally's fuel. Spot Bitcoin (BTC) ETF flows added ballast on top: about $550 million entered U.S. funds across two days, and open interest, the total value of outstanding derivatives positions, rose 6.1% to $411.67 billion. The wider altcoin market rose with it. Ethereum (ETH) added 2.26% to $2,503.87, XRP gained 3.69% to $1.37 and Solana (SOL) climbed 1.42% to $107.94. Zcash (ZEC) jumped 10.04% to $1,336.01, the largest gain among major tokens, while Monero (XMR) slipped 2.41% to $604.71. BNB added 1.61% to $748.72, Dogecoin (DOGE) rose 2.37% to $0.08306 and Hyperliquid (HYPE) gained 1.18% to $80.92. Total crypto market capitalization rose 1.89% to $2.82 trillion on the day, volume increased 4.12% to $75.53 billion and Bitcoin dominance stood at 60.2%. Analyst Ted Pillows wrote on Wednesday that Bitcoin had entered a band of concentrated sell orders between $83,500 and $85,000, and that clearing it could take the price quickly toward $90,000, though he flagged the squeeze's reliance on forced buying as the main variable. The Federal Reserve's October policy decision is the next macro checkpoint, with CME FedWatch pricing an 81% probability of a hold as of Wednesday, and the Fear and Greed Index read 55, neutral, at the time of the rally.

$84,585 Wall, $78,228 Floor

The pullback leaves the coin boxed between two well-defined edges. Our Bitcoin (BTC) technical analysis scoring puts resistance at $84,585, a 93/100 grade and the strongest level on the board, sitting inside the $83,500 to $85,000 band Pillows flagged, while support at $78,228 carries 78/100. Spot at $81,102 places price in the lower half of that range, closer to the floor than the ceiling. Positioning is unpersuasive: funding has normalized to 0.0038% on perpetuals, effectively neutral, and open interest stands at $16.18 billion after the squeeze flushed late shorts. Gains built on forced covering tend to unwind unless spot demand returns, a pattern familiar to traders who prefer to HODL through squeezes. A close below $81,000 is the trigger Glassnode tied to a $70,000 scenario, so the low-$80,000s shelf has to hold for the sideways range to survive; any renewed push has to clear the $84,585 wall.