By Francisco Rodrigues (All times ET unless indicated otherwise)
Bitcoin is hovering near $111,000 as U.S.-China trade war put a damper on investors’ risk appetite and send safe-haven assets surging.
While gold climbed 0.8% to a record above $4,230 per ounce, bitcoin’s movement was more subdued. BTC is down 2% in the last 24 hours, reflecting what analysts say is a cautious but stable outlook.
The broader crypto market endured a bigger sell-off, seeing a rapid 3.8% decline in the same period, as measured by the CoinDesk 20 (CD20) index. The pullback comes as the market stages a fragile recovery from a violent $500 billion crash last week.
Still, to analysts, the market is consolidating rather than panicking. “The recent decline was not a panic sell-off but a controlled deleveraging,” on-chain analytics firm CryptoQuant wrote in a weekly market note, pointing to stable funding rates and relatively modest outflows.
Growing options activity is for now shaping near-term market structure, Jasper De Maere, Desk Strategist at Wintermute, told CoinDesk in an emailed statement.
Traders are betting the market will calm down in the near future, evident through “lots of short straddles/diagonal calls clustered around 113–115k near-dated,” he said. On top of that, they’re adding downside protection through put calendar at $112,000.
Meanwhile, bitcoin’s price correlation with gold has reached 0.9, its highest in years. That metric supports the idea that investors increasingly treat the cryptocurrency as a hedge in times of geopolitical or economic stress.
To analysts at QCP Capital, the “setup for a renewed rally may already be forming,” based on continued institutional treasury accumulation and spot exchange-traded inflows remaining steady.
Still, traders are watching for catalysts. Rate cut expectations are offering support, with traders on Polymarket now pricing in 75 bps in total cuts this year. Stay alert!
For a more comprehensive list of events this week, see CoinDesk’s “Crypto Week Ahead”.
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Crypto
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Oct. 16, 10 a.m.: Lido Poolside Community Call #2. Watch live on YouTube, X, and LinkedIn.
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Oct. 16: OpenxAI (OPENX), a permissionless AI protocol built on the Base blockchain, launches the public version of its mini app builder.
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Oct. 16: Taiwanese stablecoin infrastructure company OwlTing will be listed on Nasdaq Global Market under ticker OWLS.
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Oct. 16: U.K. retail investors expected to be allowed to start trading eligible crypto ETNs (physically backed BTC and ETH ETNs listed on the LSE).
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Macro
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Oct. 16, 8:30 a.m.: U.S. Sept. PPI. Headline YoY Est. 2.6%, MoM Est. 0.3%. Core YoY (Prev. 2.8%), MoM (Prev. -0.1%).
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Oct. 16, 8:30 a.m.: U.S. Sept. Retail Sales YoY (Prev. 5%), MoM Est. 0.4%. (Report delayed due to current federal government shutdown)
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Earnings (Estimates based on FactSet data)
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Nothing scheduled.
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