The U.S. CPI surged to 3.7% in September, above expectations. Bets on a Fed rate hike in October briefly soared to nearly 50%, then close to $1 billion in crypto positions were liquidated. ETH alone accounted for nearly 60% of the total, and its losses were almost twice BTC’s. I spent a while staring at that ratio as I went through the data: in a highly leveraged market, the ETH/BTC exchange rate acts like an amplifier. No one complains about how powerful it is on the way up, but when prices fall, liquidation orders cascade out at the same multiple. TeraWulf, Core Scientific, Cipher Mining, and IREN all fell more than 12% that day, showing this wasn’t just a crypto market story. High oil prices pushed CPI higher, bond yields moved in response, and miners and AI infrastructure stocks were hit together. BTC fell around 3.0% over 24 hours, while its trading volume of $1.9 billion ranked first. Prices fell, but traders didn’t run.

My take is that ETH was singled out in this round of liquidations because of the leverage structure in its own ecosystem; it wasn’t simply following the broader market. As for whether rate hikes will actually materialize, I don’t have the answer either. All I can say is that with a 3.7% reading on the table, the market has already priced in the worst-case scenario. $ETH $BTC