Bitcoin Scrambles to Close October in Green as 2018 Sell-Off Shadows Loom

Crypto markets quickly rebounded on Friday after Thursday’s sharp sell-off as traders digest a cautiously optimistic outcome from the Trump-Xi meeting in Busan.

After Bitcoin (BTC) briefly dipped below $107,000 during the session, it recovered Friday morning to trade just above $110,000 at press time, up 2.7% on the day. Ethereum (ETH) is also up about 2.5% on the day, trading near $3,870, down almost 10% on the month.

BNB (BNB) saw the smallest 24-hour gains among large-caps, up just 0.1%. Others in the top-10 assets by market capitalization like XRP (XRP), Solana (SOL) and Dogecoin (DOGE) are all seeing moderate gains today between 1.5% and 3%.

This year, the much-hyped “Uptober” hasn’t been able to live up to its name, after the Oct. 10 cascading liquidations wiped out $20 billion in leveraged positions and slashed altcoin prices.

If Bitcoin ends the month where it stands now, it’ll be down about 5%, the first red October since 2018, according to data from CoinGlass. Back then, a 3.8% dip in October was just the start of a rough ride, with BTC sliding another 36.7% in November and 5% in December as the bear market deepened.

Analysts at Glassnode said in a Friday X post that Bitcoin has once again tested the 0.85 cost-basis band around $109,000, which they call “historically a make-or-break level,” adding that holding it has sparked major rallies, but losing it “often sees a slide toward the 0.75 band ($98K).”

Big Movers and Liquidations

Among the top-100 assets, Bittensor (TAO) and Zcash (ZEC) are yet once again the biggest gainers, up 11.8% and 11.3% respectively. As The Defiant reported earlier, Bittensor has been rallying as it approaches its planned halving in December.

Zcash, in particular, has been the breakout performer of “Uptober,” rallying on renewed hype for Bitcoin-like tokens with a privacy focus. The surge pushed ZEC up nearly 294% over the past 30 days, reaching levels last seen in 2018.

Meanwhile, today’s biggest losers are Figure Heloc (FIGR_HELOC) and pumpfun (PUMP), which are down 79.5% and 5% respectively.

Data from Coinglass shows that over $566.7 million in leveraged positions were liquidated in the past 24 hours, including $126.5 million in shorts and around $440 million in longs. Bitcoin accounted for $186.2 million of that total, followed by Ethereum at $126.4 million, and altcoins with $53.7 million.

ETFs, Macro Conditions and What’s Next

In October, not including today’s data, spot Ethereum ETFs recorded $668.1 million in net inflows, bringing total net assets to nearly $25 billion, while spot Bitcoin ETFs saw $3.61 billion in outflows, with its total net assets at around $144 billion, according to SoSoValue.

On the macro side, markets appear to still be digesting yesterday’s meeting in Busan where U.S. President Donald Trump and China President Xi Jinping reportedly reached a limited trade truce. As part of the deal, which has yet to be finalized, U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods would fall to about 47% from 57%, and China would pause rare-earth export controls for a year and restart some soybean purchases.