I opened my feed on Sunday and every second post said "Black Monday." The whole timeline looked like it was bracing for a crash.
The numbers back that up. Santiment counted 176 mentions of the phrase on October 18. Over the previous 60 days it averaged under two a day. The mood got more nervous after more than $33M in leveraged AI chip bets got wiped out on crypto exchanges on Saturday, with Binance making up over half the losses on each contract. $BTC also dipped to about $80,500 on Sunday.
Then Monday came and not much happened. Bitcoin was back above $82,000, and US stocks were higher at midday, with the Nasdaq up about 1.5%.
So is everything fine? I'm not sure. Two things bug me.
First, ETF money is drying up. US spot Bitcoin ETFs lost about $910M over the last two weeks. That's small next to the roughly $57B they've taken in overall, but it's still two weeks in a row of people heading for the exit.
Second, Bitcoin has been stuck between about $79.7K and $84.3K for a week, and the squeeze is the tightest in around 2.5 years. Futures open interest is at its lowest monthly average of the year, so it looks like leveraged traders are sitting this one out. A quiet market like that can move fast once it breaks, but nobody knows which way. The last time we saw this, in 2024, price dropped first and rallied later. That doesn't mean it repeats.
Add last week's hotter inflation number (3.7% against 3.6% expected) and the Fed meeting on October 27 and 28, and I get why people are jumpy.
My honest take: the crash everyone feared didn't show up, but the fear didn't fix anything either. I'd rather watch the edges of the range than guess. A daily close outside $79.7K or $84.3K will tell us more than any tweet.
What are you watching this week, the Fed, ETF flows, or just that range? 👀