Bitcoin fell to around $81,800, down 2.7% since midnight UTC, extending its decline below $82,500 after a late-Wednesday surge to nearly $84,800 reversed.

Mixed results from Tesla and Meta revived doubts over AI spending, weighing on equities and sending Nasdaq 100 futures down 1.32% and the Hang Seng index more than 2% lower.

The CoinDesk DeFi index slumped 5.6% while the CoinDesk 5 fell 2.5%.

Bitcoin BTC$84,459.46 slid by the most in two weeks, losing as much as 2.9% since midnight UTC to below $82,000 after mixed earnings reports from Tesla TSLA$386.06 and Meta Platforms META$652.31 revived doubts over AI spending and sent equities lower in Asia.

Chinese stocks entered a bear market, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index fell more 3%, South Korea’s Kospi lost 3.5% and Japan’s Nikkei 225 slipped 2.7%. Nasdaq 100 index futures dropped 1.32% and S&P 500 futures 0.66%.

Altcoins fell even harder than bitcoin, with the CoinDesk 80 (CD80) recently down 3.2% compared with 2.5% for the CoinDesk 5 (CD5). Ether ETH$2,490.55 lost 2.6% to near $2,400. DeFi bore the brunt, with the sector index (DFX) sliding 5.6%.

Spot bitcoin ETFs took in more than $1 billion over the first three days of the week, according to SoSoValue data, and Solana’s Alpenglow upgrade went live overnight, though SOL fell 2.4% to around $104. U.S. jobless claims are due later today.

Crypto futures see churn: Trading in crypto derivatives surged 19% to $226.6 billion, even as open interest fell 2.46% to $141.8 billion and liquidations jumped 52% to $431.1 million. Traders were mostly closing bets, not opening new ones. Longs and shorts are split almost evenly, so the pain was not one-sided.

BTC and ETH, majors see no new money: Volume jumped 36% for bitcoin and 27% for ether, yet open interest fell about as much as price did. That means the number of contracts held barely changed, and the dollar drop in open interest is mostly price. Traders were active, but they were not adding or cutting risk in size. Funding is barely positive, so there is no crowded bet on either side.

ZEC, NEAR, UNI, LINK and SUI, altcoin longs are leaving: Open interest fell much faster than price in all five coins. ZEC is the clearest case, with open interest dropping 6.99% as the price fell 2.34%. NEAR (-8.83%) and UNI (-10.17%) showed the same pattern. Positions are likely being closed, not held through the dip.

XAU, XAUT, XAG and CL, traders pile into commodity perps: Money is flowing into commodity contracts while crypto drains. Open interest in gold rose 12% even as its price slipped, which implies about 13% more contracts. Tokenized gold XAUT (+10%) and silver (+6.8%) show the same pattern. Rising open interest with a falling price means traders are adding shorts, or longs are buying the dip and paying to hold. Crude oil open interest is up 6.29% with negative funding of -0.0126%, so shorts are paying to stay in.

OI-normalized CVD shows market-order selling has taken over: Some 24 hours ago, almost every token saw more market-order buying than selling, with the gap peaking in the middle of the night. That flipped in the morning, with market-order selling dominating across major tokens, including BTC and ETH.

XMR is the outlier on the funding rates heatmap: Monero funding at around an annualized 70% is far above every other token. It shows that longs are paying a steep premium to hold, which is the kind of leverage build-up CoinDesk flagged on Wednesday. It is the one pocket of crowding in an otherwise quiet market, so it is the token to watch for a liquidation event if the price turns.

Implied volatility gauges stay near yearly lows: Bitcoin’s BVIV and ether’s EVIV are hovering just above their 2026 lows. Options traders are not paying for big price swings, which points to a calm market.

Calls dominate volume on Deribit: The $85,000 and $86,000 calls expiring Oct. 30 were the most traded bets on Deribit over the past 24 hours. Short-dated skews still favor puts, so downside protection costs more than upside bets. It seems traders want to chase a rally, but are not prepared to drop their hedges. Ether options show the same pattern.

Privacy coins diverged, with monero (XMR) adding 4.9% to around $651, one of only five members of the CoinDesk 100 (CD100) to gain since midnight, while zcash (ZEC) fell 4.8% to around $1,252. XMR is up around 19% over the month, with futures open interest topping $300 million this week, near January’s record, according to SoSoValue data.

DeFi led the decline on Thursday. Curve CRV$0.3929 fell 8.2% to 37 cents, though it is still up around 4% over the week. Ethena (ENA) lost 7.2%, extending a decline of around 25% over the month from its late-September peak. Uniswap (UNI) dropped 5%, leaving it down around 20% in October despite record fee revenue in September, according to Token Terminal.

Celestia (TIA) fell 3.7%, extending a slide of this week’s slide to 9% and trimming the month’s gain to around 31%, ahead of an unlock of 5.58 million TIA on Oct. 31. Layerzero ZRO$2.0132 lost 4.2% and worldcoin WLD$0.5712, the iris-scanning identity token, dropped 7.3%.

Sandbox SAND$0.05893 and starknet STRK$0.05642 tumbled by 5.1% and 6.1%, respectively. SAND had advanced after South Korea’s Upbit, Bithumb and Coinone lifted trading cautions, while STRK had gained after the network said it was considering becoming a quantum-resistant layer-1.

Pump.fun PUMP$0.005148, the Solana memecoin launchpad token, fell 6.0% and remains down around 19% this month.

Diversified RWA stablecoins sustain 5-7% yield from real credit as crypto funding compresses to ~4%. GENIUS pushes yield off-chain; TAM grows to $4B in 3 years.