Monday’s Drop Was a Long Flush
Bitcoin dropped from about $84,200 to $81,382 by Monday evening, a 2.8% decline over 24 hours. Ether fell 4.6% to $2,425, Solana lost 7.5% and XRP fell 6.4%. Bitcoin recovered above $83,000 early Tuesday, but the bounce does not establish that forced selling has finished.
The liquidation total grew during the session. An earlier CoinGlass snapshot near 7:30 p.m. ET showed $488.61 million closed across 118,142 traders, with Binance accounting for 52.3%. Ether led that snapshot with $115.19 million, followed by Bitcoin at $106.61 million and Solana at $26.97 million. The largest single liquidation was a $9.65 million Bitcoin long on Binance. By The Block’s later reading, the market-wide total had climbed to $771 million.
Open Interest Fell, but Leverage Is Still There
CoinGlass put Bitcoin futures open interest near $52.72 billion after the drop, down from about $54.46 billion before the latest flush. Glassnode’s exchange-level series showed about 434,412 Bitcoin of open interest as of Monday, led by Binance, Bybit, Gate and Hyperliquid. That is a reset, but not an empty derivatives book.
Funding also remained slightly positive. Glassnode’s open-interest-weighted aggregate was 0.003%, with positive readings on Binance and Deribit, a flat reading on Bybit and a negative rate on Hyperliquid. Longs were no longer paying an extreme premium across the market, but positioning had not flipped decisively toward shorts.
The useful comparison is the second-quarter deleveraging covered by FinanceFeeds, when Bitcoin open interest fell 32% and funding moved toward zero after $8.35 billion of Bitcoin and Ether long liquidations. Monday’s event was much smaller. It removed the most vulnerable positions around $82,000 without proving that leverage had reached a durable floor.
ETF Selling Continued on Monday
US spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded $681.1 million of net outflows during the week from 5 to 9 October. The daily series was a $89.9 million outflow, a $118.9 million inflow, then outflows of $487.1 million and $244.1 million before a $21.1 million Friday inflow. Spot Ether ETFs lost another $542 million over the week.
Monday’s ETF figure was published after the first draft. Farside Investors now shows a $65.4 million net Bitcoin ETF outflow, entirely from BlackRock’s fund, with the other products flat. FinanceFeeds had already examined how the two largest withdrawal sessions weakened spot demand. Monday’s additional outflow means the price rebound did not arrive with an immediate return to net ETF buying.
CPI Decides Whether the Reset Holds
The Bureau of Labor Statistics will release September CPI at 8:30 a.m. ET on Wednesday. At 01:32 UTC on Tuesday, Polymarket pricing compiled by PolymarketTrader gave no change at the 28 October Fed meeting a probability of 80.5% and a 25 basis-point increase 19.5%. A December increase remained the dominant outcome at 75.5%.
That leaves Bitcoin trading between a cleaned-up derivatives book and unresolved rates risk. A softer CPI could lower yields and encourage traders to rebuild longs. A hotter reading could push the market back through Monday’s liquidation zone before the bounce attracts sustained spot demand.
FinanceFeeds’ week-ahead range placed $80,000 on the bear side and $87,500 on the bull side. Monday tested the lower half without breaking $80,000. The question is whether $771 million was enough to reset positioning or merely the first forced sale before CPI. The recent $15.9 billion options expiry showed how much derivatives exposure can surround a stable spot price. Wednesday tests that stability with a macro catalyst rather than an expiry clock.
