The week of October 19 through October 25, 2026.

The bottom line

Bitcoin lost ground over the week. It traded near $80,134 on Monday morning, down 2.44% from a week earlier, after a midweek climb to $84,777 faded. Higher oil prices, falling technology stocks and jumpy bond markets pushed investors away from risk, and Bitcoin moved largely in step with stocks. US spot Bitcoin funds took in money early in the week, then gave it back. The Federal Reserve’s two-day meeting starts tomorrow.

The headline

Bitcoin spent the week pinned between a sell wall near $83,000 and support near $80,000, and the weekend broke the lower edge: price slipped below $80,000 to a one-month low as US evacuations in the Middle East, an oil price spike and equity weakness drove risk-off selling, with liquidations topping $670 million. As of Monday morning, CoinDesk reported Bitcoin back under $80,000 as traders de-risked ahead of the Fed, while Cointelegraph reported spot Bitcoin ETFs breaking a two-week outflow streak with a preliminary $301 million weekly inflow. The calendar now does the work. The FOMC meets October 27 to 28, in a week that also carries PCE, GDP and big tech earnings.

Price and macro backdrop

Bitcoin opened the window at $82,141.88 and was trading at $80,134.35 on Monday morning, a 2.44% decline over seven days. The intra-week range ran from a high of $84,777.40 on October 21, when strong SpaceX earnings briefly lifted risk appetite, to a low of $79,217.23 on October 24. The rally into the $85,000 area met supply that Glassnode had flagged at $85,000 to $87,500, and weak Tesla and Meta results, China’s slide into a bear market and oil above $110 reversed it within a day. The weekly average price was $81,594.14.

Cross-asset context points to a market trading as part of the risk complex rather than apart from it. The 30-day correlation between Bitcoin and the S&P 500 stood at 0.62, a coupled regime, while the 30-day correlation with gold was 0.29, a loose one. The S&P 500 slipped 0.47% over the week to 7,623.68, and gold fell 3.23% to $4,025.60, so the traditional haven offered no shelter either. The VIX rose from 18.87 to 19.62, peaking at 20.25 on October 23. MSTR was the exception, closing at $146.01, up 6.71% on the week, though its premium reading stood at negative 5.03%.

The macro tape leaned tighter. The dollar index sat at 121.40 in a strengthening regime, up 0.54% over 30 days. Net liquidity contracted week over week. The 10-year real rate was 2.64% against a fed funds rate of 3.88%, and the 10-year to 2-year yield spread was 0.31 percentage points. Financial conditions remain loose on paper, with the NFCI at negative 0.496, but consumer sentiment at 48.1 and a fresh rise in inflation expectations frame the Fed meeting. The read is psychologically bearish and structurally intact: sentiment soured, but no macro stress gauge broke.

Technical setup

On the daily chart, Bitcoin closed at $80,306.74 with a 14-day RSI of 42.91 and a Bollinger %B of 0.10, which places price near the lower band. Price sits 1.83% below its 50-day moving average of $81,801.37 but 10.03% above its 200-day average of $72,986.56. The daily MACD histogram is negative at negative 346.83, with the MACD line below its signal. The 6-hour RSI was 41.28, while the 1-hour RSI of 51.48 shows intraday selling pressure has eased without a recovery in trend.

ETF flows

US spot Bitcoin ETF flows swung sharply across the four sessions in the window. October 21 brought strong inflows, led by IBIT at $235.0 million and FBTC at $212.7 million. October 22 reversed that almost one for one, with IBIT shedding $254.1 million, FBTC $217.5 million and ARKB $109.4 million. IBIT lost another $110.3 million on October 23.

By issuer across those four sessions, ARKB was the largest net seller at negative $99.6 million, followed by IBIT at negative $99.5 million, FBTC at negative $33.0 million and BITB at negative $18.5 million. Small net inflows went to BTC at $8.2 million, EZBC at $7.3 million, MSBT at $6.5 million and GBTC at $3.1 million. News coverage on Monday cited a preliminary $301 million weekly inflow, measured on a different window than the four sessions above. DWF Labs argued during the week that flows follow price rather than lead it, and this week’s pattern of buying into the rally and selling into the reversal fits that description.

On-chain and mempool

Hashrate averaged 1,073.94 EH/s across the week and stood at 1,095.30 EH/s on Monday, with a low of 867.20 EH/s on October 23 and a high of 1,228.44 EH/s on October 24. Reporting during the week noted the network topping one zettahash after a difficulty increase, as Bitdeer and NIP Group added capacity and CryptoQuant attributed rising hashrate to returning institutional miners. Mining equities were weaker: Cipher’s shares fell 52% after an $850 million AI funding raise.

The mempool stayed quiet. Median and 90th percentile fee rates held at 1 sat/vB for the entire window. The transaction count averaged 49,599 and peaked at 68,681 on October 22, but block space never became contested. Mempool virtual size fell 13.81% over the week and total pending fees fell 44.62%.

Derivatives

Funding stayed in a positive regime with no flip this week: the current rate was 0.0096% against a 7-day average of 0.0035%, meaning longs kept paying shorts even as price fell. Aggregate open interest stood at $8.44 billion. The latest CFTC report, dated October 20, showed 21,040 contracts and 105,200 BTC of open interest, valued at $8.55 billion, and news coverage noted hedge funds trimming short positions to about 30,611 BTC. Positive funding into a weekend break is consistent with the roughly $670 million of long liquidations reported as price fell through $80,000.

Order book regime

The book was balanced on Monday morning. The imbalance score read 0.015, against a 24-hour average of negative 0.038. Bid depth within 2% of mid was 9.44 BTC versus a 24-hour average of 7.58, and ask depth was 9.17 BTC versus 8.22, so liquidity on both sides was above its recent baseline. The spread was 0.0012 bps against a 24-hour average of 0.0107. The most prominent wall sat on the ask side just above the $80,157 mid, with a prominence score of 7.05.

News and policy threads

Institutional framing moved in Bitcoin’s favor even as price did not. JPMorgan issued its first long-term Bitcoin outlook, projecting about 10% annual returns over the next decade with a $215,000 base case and a $385,000 bull case, while citing 55% volatility as a barrier to broader portfolio use and stopping short of recommending an allocation. Product supply kept widening. Switzerland’s FINMA approved the country’s first domestic retail spot Bitcoin ETF under Swiss fund law, Germany’s savings bank network began offering Bitcoin trading, BlackRock filed for a new buffered fund that uses options to cushion losses, and on Monday Franklin Templeton filed for ETFs that reinvest stock dividends in Bitcoin.

Corporate treasuries kept accumulating. Strategy added 267 BTC, and Strive’s $335 million purchase lifted its holdings to 36,818 BTC, though both firms are now weighing Bitcoin purchases against preferred dividend obligations. SpaceX and Tesla were reported to be exploring a merger that would unite more than 30,000 BTC on one balance sheet. In China, authorities moved to confiscate $5 billion in Bitcoin from a fugitive fraud suspect who had fled to the UK.

The protocol and wallet layer had a busy week. Electrum patched a high-severity flaw in which rogue servers replaced transactions during fee bumps and stole funds, with at least one user losing Bitcoin before the fix. Bitcoin Core tightened its disclosure policy to stop embargoing bugs that AI tools can quickly rediscover, and LND’s October 22 release candidate tests a guardrail against extreme external fee estimates.

The week ahead

The FOMC meeting begins tomorrow, October 27, and concludes October 28. The same week brings PCE inflation, GDP and major technology earnings, so the macro calendar is front-loaded. The next CPI release lands November 12, 17 days out. The halving cycle is 62.9% complete, 919 days after the last halving. For Bitcoin, the levels the market spent the week defending, roughly $80,000 below and the $85,000 to $87,500 supply zone above, frame how the Fed outcome gets priced.

Bitcoin doesn’t trade in a vacuum. Bitcoin Sidekick brings in DXY, real rates, M2 growth, the yield curve, and net liquidity so you can read Bitcoin against the macro backdrop without opening five separate apps.

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.