Bitcoin fell 0.5% to approximately $81,400 on Tuesday, despite U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs recording their largest single-day inflow in nearly a month. Renewed concerns about AI spending dragged South Korea’s Kospi index down 3.7%, adding pressure to risk assets.
Bitcoin (BTC) traded near $81,400, down 0.5% since midnight UTC, even as U.S. spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds attracted $526.6 million on Monday. That marked their strongest daily inflow in almost four weeks.
Asian equity markets set a cautious tone. South Korea’s Kospi declined 3.73%, closing at its lowest level since April 7, as SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics shares fell amid renewed concerns about AI-related spending and the outlook for semiconductor companies. Nasdaq 100 futures also slipped 0.31%.
Altcoins largely followed Bitcoin lower. Ether (ETH) lost 0.9% to trade near $2,385, while the CoinDesk 80 (CD80) index fell 0.34%. The Bitcoin-focused CoinDesk 5 (CD5) declined 0.33%. Decentralized finance tokens surrendered their previous day’s gains, with the sector’s DFX index dropping 1.2%, the steepest decline among CoinDesk’s benchmark indexes.
Brent crude traded near $110 per barrel as Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia kept concerns about potential supply disruptions elevated. Around 70 S&P 500 companies are scheduled to report earnings this week, including General Motors before Tuesday’s opening bell and United Airlines after the market closes.
Derivatives positioning
Bitcoin’s open interest on Coinalyze declined 0.6% over 24 hours to $27.4 billion. Its aggregated funding rate stood at approximately 8.8% on an annualized basis. Ether’s funding rate was around 3.9% annualized, indicating a bullish tilt among derivatives traders.
Long positions accounted for approximately 55% of Bitcoin positions, with Coinalyze reporting a long-to-short ratio of 1.24. Data from Binance’s top traders showed a similar preference for longs, with the BTC-USDT position ratio reaching 1.78 on CoinGlass.
On Deribit, put options outnumbered call options traded by more than two to one over the previous 24 hours. The October 30 $80,000 put was the most actively traded contract. Out-of-the-money puts also commanded premiums of 2.5 to 4 volatility points over comparable calls across different expiries. This bearish skew suggests traders are paying more to protect against potential declines, even though open interest remains concentrated in calls with $90,000 to $100,000 strike prices expiring October 30.
CoinGlass recorded $155.1 million in liquidations over 24 hours, a 54.7% decrease from the previous day. Long positions represented approximately 69% of liquidations in CoinMarketCap’s figures. Coinalyze recorded roughly $30 million in liquidations each for Bitcoin and Ether, together accounting for about half of its total $120.6 million tally.
Token market updates
Celestia (TIA) gained 2.2% to approximately $0.63, making it the strongest performer on the CoinDesk 100 (CD100) index. The token has risen around 42% over the past month.
The rally coincided with Celestia’s October 1 benchmark results, which showed its Fibre scaling system averaging 3.07 terabits per second. Derivatives exchange Derive also selected Celestia to provide data availability for its V3 release. Investors are now watching an October 31 token unlock involving 5.58 million TIA, according to Tokenomist.
The Sandbox (SAND) was the weakest performer on the CD100, dropping 4.5% to approximately $0.06 and giving back part of its roughly 30% monthly gain. The earlier rally began after South Korean cryptocurrency exchanges Upbit, Bithumb and Coinone lifted trading cautions introduced in August following a bridge exploit.
Layer-2 tokens also experienced significant losses. Arbitrum (ARB) fell 3.6%, while Starknet (STRK) declined 3.2%. Despite the pullback, Starknet remains up around 29% over the past month after surging on October 9 and 10. The rally followed the network’s announcement that it was considering transitioning into an independent, quantum-resistant layer-1 blockchain by 2027.
Decentralized finance tokens also retreated after Monday’s gains. Uniswap (UNI) fell 2.3% to around $7.14, while Morpho (MORPHO) declined 2.5%. UNI has lost approximately 20% over the past month despite its fee switch increasing protocol revenue to $14.81 million in September. According to Token Terminal, that was the strongest monthly result since the protocol began retaining fees.
Ethena (ENA) dropped another 1.9%, extending its decline to around 30% from a late-September peak near $0.29. The supply of its USDe stablecoin stood at approximately $4.7 billion, down substantially from a peak near $15 billion. That remains well below the $7.5 billion threshold required to activate ENA token buybacks.
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