Bitcoin stands at $81,568 on Friday morning, around 1.5 percent lower than 24 hours earlier. The trigger did not come from the blockchain but from Wall Street: the Nasdaq closed 2.6 percent l
Bitcoin stands at $81,568 on Friday morning, around 1.5 percent lower than 24 hours earlier. The trigger did not come from the blockchain but from Wall Street: the Nasdaq closed 2.6 percent lower on Thursday after Tesla cut its spending forecast and doubts about the large investments in data centres returned. Overnight the price slipped to $80,989, and derivatives exchanges forcibly closed leveraged long positions worth several hundred million dollars.
On a morning like this, the percentage figure matters less than the question of where your own risk sits. This article places the night in context, explains the mechanism behind the liquidation wave, names the levels of the day with reasons, and shows what an investor in Germany can settle today: on leverage, on the holding period, on the buying route.
The move began on the equity markets. The Nasdaq lost 2.6 percent on Thursday, and Nasdaq 100 futures gave up a further 1.1 percent. The impulse came from Tesla's lowered spending forecast, which the market read as a signal for the entire investment wave in data centres and AI hardware.
Bitcoin followed with a delay. The price had briefly traded above $84,800 on Wednesday, then fell below $82,000 and marked a low of $80,989 in the night into Friday. Individual venues show $80,836 as the daily low; that spread arises because every exchange runs its own order book. On Friday morning the price stands at $81,568, roughly €72,700.
The relationship to the rest of the market is striking. The market capitalisation of all cryptocurrencies fell by a good 4 percent in 24 hours to $2.75 trillion, while Bitcoin itself lost only 1.5 percent. Bitcoin's share of that total now stands at 59.5 percent. How far the altcoins fell over the same period is broken down in our market report on the selloff from Thursday.
The figures for the forced closures differ from one data provider to the next, and there is a factual reason: each provider covers a different set of exchanges. CoinGlass arrived at around $431 million over 24 hours. A second count puts more than $412 million on closed long positions alone, a third $454.81 million across 102,764 affected accounts. What holds is this: it was a wave in the mid hundreds of millions, and it hit almost exclusively investors positioned for rising prices.
A liquidation is not a decision to sell. The exchange closes a leveraged position automatically as soon as the posted collateral no longer covers the paper loss. The holder of the position is not asked.
Every forced close pushes the price onto the next liquidation threshold and triggers the next one there.
The mechanism takes three sentences. A leveraged buyer posts only a fraction of the position value as collateral, known as margin. If the price falls far enough for the paper loss to consume that collateral, the exchange closes the position by itself and sells the underlying coins into the market. That forced sale pushes the price a little further down, to where the next group of positions reaches its threshold.
That is why such waves run in steps. A market quietly losing one percent can lose three percent within minutes once a densely populated liquidation zone is reached. The slide from $82,000 to just under $81,000 last night carried exactly that signature: two quick downward steps with a brief pause between them.
The reverse direction works the same way. On Wednesday it was the sellers' turn, when the price jumped briefly above $84,800 and short positions were forcibly covered. A market with a lot of leverage swings further in both directions than the underlying news justifies. That is the key difference between the derivatives market and the spot market, where you simply own coins.
The second point of attack sits next to the chart, in the fund business. US spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded a net outflow of $635.5 million on Thursday. The largest single item came from BlackRock's IBIT at around $254.05 million, followed by Fidelity's FBTC at $217.46 million. Together the two funds accounted for about three quarters of the day's outflow. Only one provider saw an inflow that day: Morgan Stanley's MSBT, at roughly $2.3 million.
An ETF is an exchange-traded fund that tracks the price of an underlying asset; the US spot products hold real Bitcoin in custody for that purpose. When money leaves, the fund has to sell coins. The outflow therefore creates genuine selling pressure in the order book.
The number only becomes meaningful over time. On Tuesday we reported $526.7 million in inflows here at a price of $82,708. A further $528 million came in on Wednesday, taking the funds to more than $1 billion collected over three trading days. On Thursday the direction reversed.
The price has barely moved over those three days: $82,708 on Tuesday, $81,568 today, a decline of around 1.4 percent. Over seven days it is half a percent down, over 30 days almost six percent. Fund flows therefore swing considerably more than the price itself. That gives a simple reading aid: a single day of outflows is no sell signal, while a series of outflow days does point to thinner demand.
Two levels can be justified from the past 24 hours of trading without borrowing anyone else's forecast.
On the downside it is the overnight low at $80,989, or $80,836 at individual venues. That zone held during the night, and the price has run back about $600 from it. If it gives way during the day, the next psychologically occupied level is $80,000, and below that begins the area where the next group of leveraged positions reaches its threshold.
On the upside it is the daily high at $82,910. Only above that does Wednesday's interim high around $84,800 come back within range. Until then the price moves in a band of just under $2,000, about 2.4 percent. The all-time high of $126,080 from October 2025 remains some 35 percent away.
The most obvious action on such a morning concerns open risk, before any purchase. Work out your distance to liquidation, and do it in dollars. The rule of thumb: at leverage of 10 the threshold sits roughly 10 percent below your entry, at leverage of 20 already at 5 percent, at leverage of 5 at 20 percent. Fees and funding costs shift the threshold further up.
Hold that against last night's range: 2.3 percent lay between $82,910 and $80,989. A position opened at leverage of 20 in the upper part of that band stood at the threshold within a few hours. The 102,764 affected accounts show exactly that. How venues for such products differ on fees and liquidation rules is set out in our comparison of perp DEXs.
Losses from crypto sales can be offset, but only with complete records for each individual sale.
A price slide has a tax side in Germany that goes unnoticed on quiet days. Gains from the sale of cryptocurrencies count as a private disposal under section 23 of the German Income Tax Act. If you hold the coins for longer than a year, the gain stays tax free. If you sell within the year, it is taxed at your personal rate once the sum of all such gains in the calendar year reaches €1,000.
Today the other direction is what counts: losses from sales within the one-year period can be offset against gains from other private disposals in the same year, and whatever remains can be carried forward. If you close a position at a loss today, document the sale cleanly: date, quantity, acquisition price, sale price, fees. Without those details the tax office will not accept the offset. Where the holding period stands politically is tracked in our overview of the holding period reform. Which tools assign the individual sales automatically is covered in the comparison of crypto tax software.
One detail is often overlooked. The one-year period runs per acquisition, not per wallet. If you bought in tranches over months, each tranche has its own deadline. A sale during a price slide hits the oldest holdings first under the first in, first out principle, that is, the ones closest to being tax free.
If you want to use the decline to add, look at the trading venue first. Under the European Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation, MiCA for short, every provider that targets retail clients in the EU needs authorisation as a crypto-asset service provider. It is granted by the supervisor of a member state, in Germany by BaFin, and then applies across Europe.
In practice that means an authorised provider keeps your coins separate from its own assets, publishes its fees in full and answers to a supervisor you can turn to in a dispute. A provider without authorisation offers none of that. Which platforms meet the requirements and what trading there costs is broken down in our comparison of the best crypto exchanges.
For larger holdings, custody remains the second question. Coins on an exchange belong to you economically but sit in someone else's care. Long-term holders usually move them to their own wallet and secure the recovery words offline in two separate places.
The next date with an effect on the price falls next Wednesday. The open market committee of the US Federal Reserve meets on October 27 and 28, and the decision comes on October 28. The target range for the policy rate currently stands at 3.75 to 4.00 percent. The meeting dates are listed in the Federal Reserve's official calendar.
The link to the Bitcoin price runs through the risk budgets of the large houses. If rates stay high, safe interest income becomes more attractive and assets without a running yield lose weight. If rates fall, that relationship turns around. That is why Bitcoin currently reacts more to the Nasdaq than to news from its own industry: both hang on the same risk budget.
For the coming days that means a wider range of fluctuation around Wednesday evening European time. A larger purchase can be split into tranches instead of putting the whole sum to work before the date.
The position on Friday morning fits in one sentence: Bitcoin is holding up better at $81,568 than the broader market, and the overnight low just under $81,000 is the level on which the day turns. Three steps make sense today.
(As of October 23, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy. Trading cryptocurrencies carries the risk of total loss.)
