Bitcoin declined 0.5% to around $81,400 on Tuesday, despite U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs attracting $526.6 million in a single day, their largest inflow in almost a month. Renewed concerns about AI investment sent South Korea’s Kospi sharply lower, weighing on broader market sentiment.
Bitcoin (BTC) traded near $81,400, down 0.5% since midnight UTC, even after spot Bitcoin ETFs in the U.S. recorded $526.6 million in net inflows on Monday, marking their strongest daily performance in nearly four weeks.
Asian equities came under pressure first. South Korea’s Kospi dropped 3.73%, closing at its lowest level since April 7, as SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics shares retreated amid renewed questions about AI spending and the semiconductor sector’s outlook. Nasdaq 100 futures also fell 0.31%.
Most major cryptocurrencies followed Bitcoin lower. Ether (ETH) slipped 0.9% to approximately $2,385, while the CoinDesk 80 index (CD80) declined 0.34%. The Bitcoin-heavy CoinDesk 5 index (CD5) lost 0.33%. Decentralized finance tokens underperformed, with the DFX sector index falling 1.2%, the largest decline among CoinDesk’s benchmark indexes.
Brent crude hovered near $110 per barrel as Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia kept oil supply concerns in focus. Approximately 70 companies in the S&P 500 are due to publish earnings this week, including General Motors before Tuesday’s market open and United Airlines after the closing bell.
Derivatives market positioning
Bitcoin open interest on Coinalyze fell 0.6% over 24 hours to $27.4 billion. The aggregated funding rate stood at roughly 8.8% annualized, while Ether’s funding rate was around 3.9%, suggesting traders maintained a bullish bias toward ETH.
Long positions made up about 55% of Bitcoin positions, with Coinalyze reporting a long-to-short ratio of 1.24. Binance’s top traders displayed a similar preference for bullish exposure, with the BTC-USDT position ratio at 1.78, according to CoinGlass.
Deribit data showed put options trading at more than twice the volume of calls over the previous 24 hours. The October 30 $80,000 put was the most actively traded contract. Across several expiry dates, out-of-the-money puts carried premiums of 2.5 to 4 volatility points over comparable calls. This skew indicates that traders are paying more to hedge against a potential price decline, even as open interest remains concentrated in October 30 calls with strike prices between $90,000 and $100,000.
CoinGlass reported $155.1 million in liquidations over 24 hours, down 54.7% from the previous day. Long positions accounted for approximately 69% of liquidations in CoinMarketCap’s data. Coinalyze recorded around $30 million in liquidations for Bitcoin and a similar amount for Ether, together representing roughly half of its $120.6 million total.
Token market movements
Celestia (TIA) advanced 2.2% to approximately $0.63, becoming the top gainer on the CoinDesk 100 index (CD100). The token has climbed about 42% over the past month.
The gains followed Celestia’s October 1 benchmark results, which showed its Fibre scaling system averaging 3.07 terabits per second. Derivatives platform Derive also selected Celestia for data availability in its V3 release. The next event investors are monitoring is an October 31 unlock of 5.58 million TIA tokens, according to Tokenomist.
The Sandbox (SAND) led the CD100’s losses, falling 4.5% to around $0.06. The decline erased part of its roughly 30% gain over the previous month. That rally began after South Korean exchanges Upbit, Bithumb and Coinone removed trading cautions imposed in August following a bridge exploit.
Layer-2 assets also weakened. Arbitrum (ARB) dropped 3.6%, while Starknet (STRK) lost 3.2%. Despite the declines, Starknet remains up approximately 29% over the month following a sharp rally on October 9 and 10. The move came after the network said it was considering becoming an independent, quantum-resistant layer-1 blockchain by 2027.
DeFi tokens gave back some of Monday’s gains, with Uniswap (UNI) falling 2.3% to around $7.14 and Morpho (MORPHO) losing 2.5%. UNI has declined about 20% over the past month, despite its fee switch helping protocol revenue reach $14.81 million in September. Token Terminal data shows this was its strongest month since the protocol began retaining fees.
Ethena (ENA) slipped another 1.9%, extending its monthly decline to roughly 30% from a late-September high near $0.29. USDe supply stood at about $4.7 billion, down from a peak close to $15 billion. The current level remains well below the $7.5 billion threshold at which ENA token buybacks would begin.
