The week of October 12 through October 18, 2026.
The bottom line
Bitcoin finished the week a little lower, near $82,081, after a hotter than expected US inflation report pushed it briefly below $80,000 on Thursday. Stocks fell at the same time, and Bitcoin has been moving closely with them. More money left the big Bitcoin funds than came in. The network’s computing power hit a weekly high while transaction fees stayed at rock bottom. The next Fed rate decision is eight days away, on October 27.
The headline
A hot September inflation print set the tone. Bitcoin opened the window at $83,354.78, peaked at $84,049.57 on October 13, then slid after core CPI beat forecasts on October 14 and PPI followed. The low came at $79,776.36 on October 15, as October Fed hike odds rose toward 55% and a risk off move sent South Korea’s Kospi down about 8% and Japan’s Nikkei 5% lower. Nearly $940 million in leveraged positions were liquidated on the way down. Price recovered to $82,081.08 by Monday morning, a weekly change of minus 1.5%. As of Monday, Bitcoin, the Kospi and Nasdaq futures were rallying together after China’s GDP beat estimates, and a widely circulated “Black Monday” call had not materialized, with price eyeing $83,000.
Price and macro backdrop
The intra-week range ran from $79,776.36 to $84,049.57, and the seven-day average price was $82,091.62. Equities carried the same message. The S&P 500 fell from 7,811.54 to 7,659.44, a 1.9% decline, with its weekly low of 7,641.68 printed on October 16. The VIX rose from 15.47 to 18.53 after touching 21.71 on Friday. Gold was flat, moving from $4,194.90 to $4,187.30. Strategy (MSTR) took the heaviest hit of the cross-asset group, falling from $154.34 to $136.83, an 11.3% decline, with a low of $135.00. The 30-day correlation between Bitcoin and the S&P 500 stands at 0.59, a coupled regime, while the link to gold is loose at 0.25. This week Bitcoin traded as a risk asset, not a hedge.
The macro tape leaned tighter. The dollar index sits at 121.60 in a strengthening regime. The 10-year real rate is 2.78% and the 5-year real rate is 2.58%, with the fed funds rate at 3.88% and CPI running 3.7% year over year. Against that, financial conditions remain loose: the Chicago Fed NFCI reads minus 0.499 and the stress index reads minus 0.7206. Net liquidity edged higher week over week, and high yield spreads sit at 3.23%. Consumer sentiment is weak at 51.7. The combination fits a market that was psychologically bearish and structurally intact: a rate scare and an equity drawdown, without a breakdown in funding conditions.
Technical setup
On the daily chart, the 14-day RSI sits at 50.10, squarely neutral, and Bollinger %B reads 0.35, placing price in the lower half of its band. The last daily close of $82,345.62 sits 1.1% above the 50-day moving average of $81,489.54 and 13.5% above the 200-day moving average of $72,571.24, while the 20-day average of $83,266.12 sits overhead as near-term resistance. The daily MACD histogram is negative at minus 371.47. Intraday, the hourly RSI is 55.88 and price is trading almost exactly at its hourly 200-period average.
ETF flows
US spot Bitcoin ETFs leaned toward outflows over the four reported trading days from October 13 to October 16. BlackRock’s IBIT posted a net of minus $100 million: an inflow of $65.9 million on October 13, an outflow of $110.9 million on October 14, an inflow of $16.8 million on October 15, and an outflow of $71.8 million on October 16. Fidelity’s FBTC posted a net of minus $60.2 million, swinging from a $103.1 million inflow on Monday to a $152.7 million outflow on Tuesday, the largest single-day move of the window.
Smaller issuers were mixed. Grayscale’s mini trust (BTC) lost $7.6 million and Invesco’s BTCO lost $4.1 million, while MSBT gained $6.7 million and Bitwise’s BITB gained $2.2 million. GBTC, ARKB, HODL, BRRR, BTCW and EZBC recorded no net flow. Friday’s $82.4 million in outflows, led by IBIT, came as the CPI repricing settled in. Reports during the week noted that large holders kept accumulating at their fastest pace since February even as fund flows weakened, a divergence worth tracking into the FOMC.
On-chain and mempool
Hashrate climbed through the week, from 1,028.59 EH/s to 1,109.16 EH/s, a 7.8% increase, with the closing reading also the weekly high. The low of 943.24 EH/s came on October 18, so the recovery into Monday was sharp. The move comes as Binance Pool prepares to close its mining service on November 10, giving miners weeks to migrate machines to other pools; the pool’s hashrate had fallen 65% since December.
The mempool is quiet. Both the median fee rate and the 90th percentile fee rate held at 1 sat/vB for the entire week. The pending transaction count fell from 82,973 to 46,933, a 43.4% decline, with a low of 29,420, and mempool size fell from 39.86 million to 25.96 million vbytes. Total pending fees peaked at 26.26 million sats on October 15, the day of the price low, then faded. For self-custody users, this is a low-cost window to consolidate or move coins.
Derivatives
Funding stayed positive all week with no flip. The current rate is 0.0058% per period against a seven-day average of 0.0049%, a sign that longs kept paying to hold positions through the dip rather than capitulating. The CFTC report dated October 13 shows CME open interest of 20,752 contracts, or 103,760 BTC, worth about $8.46 billion; the current open interest reading is $8.42 billion. Weekend reports put broader futures open interest at $7.68 billion, a reading of lighter leverage rather than a bearish turn.
Order book regime
The book is balanced and tight. The imbalance score reads minus 0.037, a slight tilt toward asks, compared with a 24-hour average near zero. Bid depth within 1% of mid is 6.44 BTC against 6.94 BTC on the ask side, in line with 24-hour averages of 6.65 BTC and 6.56 BTC. The spread is 0.0012 basis points, well inside the 24-hour average of 0.027. The most prominent wall sits on the bid side, 0.03% below mid, with a prominence score of 6.63.
News and policy threads
The treasury company story split in two. Strive kept buying, adding 3,311 BTC for $280 million early in the week, exercising warrants, and launching a $500 million preferred share raise; by the weekend it held 35,595 BTC and had priced a preferred share yielding 16.7%, drawing a raised Wall Street price target. Strategy moved the other way in the market. MSCI’s revised index rules threaten to strip Strategy of benchmark status and could force up to $2.8 billion in selling, and MSTR shares slid 7% on Friday even as Barclays raised its target to $175. Capital B grew its holdings 11% despite a $75 million impairment charge.
Quantum security moved from background to foreground. Google’s Willow chip breakthrough sharpened concern over coins held in Satoshi-era wallets, and nine firms formed a Quantum Alliance to prepare the network, though they remain split on timing and on whether vulnerable coins should eventually be frozen. Developers are working against a six to twelve month window to agree on a roadmap. Coinbase, which holds about 5% of all bitcoin, urged early preparation, and researchers built a working quantum-resistant defense for the Lightning Network.
On the institutional side, Deutsche Bank is reportedly set to launch Bitcoin custody within weeks. In London, a UK court ruled that Chinese law governs claims to the 61,000 BTC seized in the Zhimin Qian fraud case, leaving victims’ claims unresolved. Geopolitics added pressure late in the week, as reports of a possible US strike on Iran pushed oil to a monthly high before prices eased on Monday. A dormant wallet that acquired its coins in 2013 at $131 moved $34 million in BTC over the weekend.
The week ahead
The FOMC decision lands on October 27, eight days out, and it is now the dominant event for Bitcoin. Hike odds swung between roughly 47% and 55% over the week, so incoming Fed commentary will matter more than usual. The next CPI release is November 12, 24 days away. Watch whether price can reclaim the 20-day average near $83,266 and the $84,000 area that capped every rally this week, whether ETF flows turn back to inflows ahead of the Fed, and whether the hashrate gain holds as Binance Pool miners relocate. The halving cycle is 62.4% complete, 912 days since the last halving.
Fear and Greed is one signal among many. Bitcoin Sidekick layers it alongside price action, ETF flows, and on-chain activity so you can see the full sentiment picture, not a single number out of context.
onlyhashes.com publishes a weekly Bitcoin review every Monday morning. The data behind this post is generated by Bitcoin Sidekick’s OreRelay infrastructure: Bitcoin-only, no third-party trackers, no altcoins. Disclosures: this is editorial commentary on publicly available market data; nothing in this post is investment advice.