Bitcoin approaches the weekend down approximately 4% compared to the same period last Friday, despite climbing back toward $82,500 after hitting a low near $80,300 on Thursday. Meanwhile, Ether experienced a 9% weekly decline, settling around $2,500.
The cryptocurrency’s upward correction arrived on the heels of a social media message published by President Donald Trump on Thursday via Truth Social, stating that the United States would refrain from striking Iran prior to the November 3 midterm elections. Simultaneously, Brent crude experienced a 1% daily drop, moving down to roughly $103 per barrel.
Lower-capitalization altcoins spearheaded the rebound, pushing the CoinDesk 80 index up 2.2% since midnight UTC, marking a performance more than double the gains seen in the CoinDesk 5.
Nevertheless, this recovery has not fully erased the prior day’s losses; the broader CoinDesk 100 remains down 2.2% over a 24-hour window, and decentralized finance assets have shed close to 4%. Furthermore, U.S.-listed spot exchange-traded funds tracking bitcoin, ether, and zcash recorded capital outflows on Thursday, leaving XRP vehicles as the sole digital asset products to attract positive net inflows.
Criticism has also mounted against Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake’s proposal for a protective "bunker mode," which contributed to negative market sentiment during Thursday’s sell-off. Coinbase chief cryptographer Yehuda Lindell rejected these worries as mere fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD), emphasizing that there is zero empirical proof indicating the cryptographic elliptic-curve assumptions underlying both bitcoin and ether have been compromised.
In parallel, U.S. stock index futures advanced following Trump’s remarks, with Nasdaq 100 futures climbing 0.83% since midnight and S&P 500 futures gaining 0.44%.
Derivatives positioning
- Data from Coinalyze shows that bitcoin futures open interest contracted by 1.9% over a 24-hour period to settle at $27.1 billion, showing minimal movement since Thursday afternoon’s market flush even as bitcoin recovered to approximately $82,500, which implies the recovery happened without the injection of new leverage.
- Perpetual funding rates hold steady in positive territory at roughly 5% on an annualized basis, with projected rates edging slightly higher, indicating that long traders continue to compensate holders to maintain their positions. Furthermore, Deribit contracts expiring on October 30 trade at an annualized basis of close to 7%.
- Trader accounts holding long bitcoin exposure outnumber short sellers by a factor of nearly two to one. Coinalyze’s consolidated long-to-short metric rests at 1.85, indicating that approximately 65% of positions are long, representing a rise from near-even distribution at the start of the month.
- CoinGlass metrics indicate total liquidations reached $1.09 billion across the trailing 24 hours, with long positions responsible for $931 million, or roughly 85% of all liquidations. Ether led liquidations at $345 million, followed by bitcoin at $266 million and solana at $65 million, while the single largest liquidation involved a $20 million ETH-USD order executed on Hyperliquid.
Token talk
- Starknet recorded a 33% 24-hour price surge after announcing that the protocol is actively reviewing a transition away from Ethereum to function as an independent layer-1 blockchain, with a goal of achieving complete quantum resistance by 2027. Final authorization for this proposal is still pending. This announcement arrives just days after Pudgy Penguins’ Abstract became the second Ethereum layer-2 network to discontinue operations within a single week.
- Kaia, a layer-1 network created through the consolidation of Kakao’s Klaytn and LINE’s Finschia, surged 40% past midnight following a trading debut on Upbit, South Korea’s largest cryptocurrency exchange. Additional layer-1 assets participated in the rally, with aptos advancing 12% alongside cosmos and polkadot, which both tacked on close to 10%.
- The standout performers from Thursday’s trading session have largely surrendered their previous gains. Algorand, which led the CoinDesk 100 on Thursday morning with a 9% increase, gave back 14% over a 24-hour timeframe, while curve retraced 13% subsequent to an earlier 11% appreciation.
- A pair of artificial intelligence tokens failed to join the wider market rebound following a revenue update released by OpenAI that impacted AI-focused equities. On Thursday, CNBC verified that OpenAI informed its backers of an annualized revenue run rate totaling $50 billion as of late September, falling short of the $68 billion metric widely circulated the previous month, which subsequently triggered the Nasdaq Composite’s sharpest single-session drop since mid-August. AI agent payment tokens kite and venice both dropped roughly 9% across the past 24 hours and continue to trade slightly lower on a daily basis.
- Pyth Network, a prominent oracle asset, registered a 13% expansion over 24 hours, positioning itself among a select group of tokens exhibiting positive performance across both short-term tracking intervals.
Originally published at https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2026/10/09/bitcoin-steadies-near-usd82-500-after-trump-rules-out-iran-strike-before-midterms.
