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If the lower bound of Bitcoin's trading range cannot be held, it may test the $76,000 to $79,000 range
Dragged down by hotter-than-expected U.S. inflation data (September CPI rose 3.7% year over year, while PPI surged 6.3% year over year, the largest increase since 2022) and spreading panic over the bursting of the AI computing power bubble in U.S. stocks, Bitcoin briefly fell to $79,800 last week. As China's third-quarter GDP grew 4.5% year over year this morning, beating expectations, and international oil prices retreated from highs, Bitcoin temporarily held the $80,000 defense line, and market risk appetite recovered somewhat.
Bitcoin's trading range continues to narrow, and it has been trapped between the 15-day and 50-day moving averages for 12 consecutive days. Multiple analysts regard the area around $80,000 as a "lifeline" that bulls must defend at all costs. BIT noted that the weekly stochastic indicator has risen from the 20% oversold zone to the 90% overbought zone. If it falls back below 90% and crosses below the slow moving average, it often signals a shift from gains to losses. If Bitcoin's weekly closing price falls below $82,000, this bearish signal will be confirmed. However, the institution's longer-cycle judgment has not yet turned bearish. It said that as long as BTC stays above the mid-$75,000 level, the 1-6 month outlook remains positive, but potential selling pressure from miners' nearly 1.8 million BTC, the October 28 FOMC meeting, and rising U.S. Treasury yields require caution in the short term.
CoinMarketCap warned that, affected by AI bubble concerns and the semiconductor sector selloff, investors' risk appetite has dropped significantly, market sentiment remains weak in the short term, and Bitcoin is at risk of breaking below the $81,000 to $86,000 trading range. If Bitcoin cannot hold the lower bound of the trading range, it may face pressure to fall further into the $76,000 to $79,000 range. Some traders are even bearish down to $69,000 or even $53,000. The bull camp believes that the daily RSI has fallen back into its historical rebound zone, and only a high-volume breakout above the dense resistance band of $82,500 to $84,500 can reverse the structure of lower highs and launch a counterattack toward $87,000 and above $90,000.
Today's highlights:
Week ahead | The Starknet community will vote on its intention to transition to an independent quantum-resistant L1; Robinhood Chain ecosystem trading platform Fables conducts TGE
Data: Tokens including ZRO and XPL will see large unlocks this week, with ZRO's unlock valued at about $43.3 million
CME plans to launch Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and Uniswap (UNI) futures on October 19
Mint Blockchain will cease operations on October 20, and users need to withdraw assets before that date
Strive plans to increase the SATS preferred stock IPO to 7 million shares and raise $630 million on October 20
The South Korean government will convene the five major crypto exchanges on October 20 to discuss virtual asset taxation issues
StandX will gradually cease operations on October 20; from today, perpetual contracts will only allow position reduction
Kaito (KAITO) unlocks about 17.6 million tokens, valued at about $5 million
LayerZero (ZRO) unlocks about 25.72 million tokens, valued at about $47.3 million
Upbit 24-hour trading volume ranking: CT, XRP, BTC, GTC, ETH
Spot Bitcoin ETFs saw a net outflow of $229 million last week, with BlackRock's IBIT leading with a net outflow of $165 million
Spot Ethereum ETFs saw a net outflow of $320 million last week, marking three consecutive weeks of net outflows
Spot SOL ETFs saw a net outflow of $25.5207 million last week, a record high
Spot HYPE ETFs saw a net outflow of $17.5724 million last week
Spot XRP ETFs saw a net outflow of $1.8375 million last week
Top gainers among the top 100 coins by market cap today: ARB up 7.2%, VVV up 6%, PEPE up 5%, PUMP up 4.5%, ETHFI up 3.4%.
U.S. stock night session recovery weakens "Black Monday" selling pressure sentiment, tech stock sentiment repairs
U.S. stock index futures turned higher collectively before the Asian session, with Nasdaq futures up more than 1%, S&P 500 futures up nearly 0.60%, and Dow futures up 0.15%, as risk appetite briefly recovered from last week's AI selloff.
This long-awaited warmth was mainly due to expectations that the Trump administration will exempt Russian fuel sanctions, which drove oil prices lower, combined with China's third-quarter GDP and retail sales both beating expectations, greatly soothing market anxiety over global stagflation and prompting the VIX index, which measures panic sentiment, to fall rapidly from a high above 22.
BIT night-session data showed that the chip and AI computing power sectors, which were the hardest hit last week, became the vanguard of capital replenishment. The 3x long Korea ETF surged 14.94%, the 3x long semiconductor ETF soared 7.74%, and the Philadelphia Semiconductor ETF rose 2.59%. Among individual names, AI cloud unicorn Nebius, which was savaged last week, rebounded strongly by 3.44% in the night session, while SK Hynix, SanDisk, and Intel all rose more than 3.3%. AMD (+2.75%), Micron Technology (+2.59%), Nvidia (+1.60%), and TSMC (+1.50%) all rose, while SpaceX and Tesla also edged up 1.68% and 0.59%, respectively.
AI selling pressure lingers, crypto-related stocks under collective pressure
The Nasdaq plunged 2.14% last Friday (a weekly drop of 4.48%, the worst performance in 18 months), the S&P 500 fell 1.09%, the Dow edged down 0.34%, and the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index suffered a rare eighth consecutive decline, the longest since 2008, with more than $2 trillion in market value wiped out in a single week. UBS's trading desk characterized this as crowding-dominated "targeted deleveraging rather than risk reduction." Goldman Sachs strategist Louis Miller issued an even harsher warning: credit spreads for hyperscale cloud service providers have widened to the widest level of the year, and credit default swaps have hit record highs, suggesting related stocks still have 15% downside.
Meanwhile, Fed Chair Warsh refused to give rate-hike guidance before the blackout period, pushing the 10-year U.S. Treasury yield down 17 basis points last week to around 5.05%. Under the seesaw effect between stocks and bonds, funds are frantically fleeing highly indebted AI sectors and flooding into traditional defensive sectors such as Chevron, Exxon Mobil, and Coca-Cola, which have hit record highs.
In this purge targeting high valuations and high financing costs, Nvidia-backed computing cloud unicorn CoreWeave plunged 11.91% on Friday (down nearly 25% for the week) after its five-year CDS spread surged past 1,100 basis points, implying a default probability of more than 60%. Peer Nebius also plunged 12.18%, and Oracle fell 4.64%. Moderna tumbled 7.82% after the FDA refused to accept its application for a seasonal flu vaccine. Meta fell 3.72% on expectations that third-quarter free cash flow would turn negative (-$9.14 billion) and on massive borrowing to expand data centers, while Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Nvidia all fell between 1.4% and 2.3%. Although Tesla showcased the "flying" stunt of its next-generation Roadster sports car, JPMorgan and HSBC poured cold water on it, saying that a delay in mass production until 2028 would not help short-term profitability, and the stock opened higher but closed down 2.13%. Only Apple, thanks to the strong consumer resilience of its first foldable phone, the iPhone Duo, which sold out within minutes of preorders and saw shipping delayed to December, bucked the trend to close up 0.43% and hit a record high.
Hit by the triple blow of U.S. tech stock deleveraging, widening credit spreads, and Bitcoin's pullback, the U.S. "crypto-related stocks" sector fell across the board last Friday. According to BIT U.S. Stocks data, Bitcoin miners transitioning to AI data centers became the hardest-hit area of selling due to concerns over high capital expenditures and financing costs. Riot Platforms plunged 11.48%, IREN tumbled 11.19%, Hut 8 Mining fell 10.96%, Cipher Digital (-10.56%) and CleanSpark (-10.16%) both fell more than 10%, and Marathon Digital (-9.60%), Canaan Technology (-8.17%), Bitdeer Tech (-8.04%), and Terawulf (-7.45%) were not spared either.
Strategy plunged 9.56% last Friday (though it has since rebounded 2.52% in today's night session along with BTC's rebound, and the iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF also rose 1.43% in the night session), Coinbase fell 5.79%, Circle dropped 5.46%, and Robinhood also closed down 4.92%.
Korean stocks stage a desperate counterattack to recover losses; Japanese stocks constrained by rate-hike expectations and chip valuation repricingAsia-Pacific stock markets opened a new week of trading on Monday with sharp divergence, as South Korea's market staged a dramatic reversal while Japan's market closed lower amid hawkish central bank hints and aftershocks in chip stocks.
South Korea's KOSPI opened 3% lower in the morning, dragged down by last week's AI selloff in U.S. stocks, but as the South Korean finance minister came out in support, saying that "South Korea's economic growth is expected to reach 3.4%-3.6% in 2026, stock market fundamentals are sound, and the chip boom will continue through 2027," combined with the Korean won touching its strongest level against the U.S. dollar in two years, the KOSPI reversed its early losses and closed sharply higher by 1.75%.
The earlier plunge in Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix had already caused the valuation of the National Pension Fund's holdings to shrink by 182 trillion won (about $137 billion) since the end of June, and South Korea's Financial Supervisory Service warned on Monday that SK Hynix's U.S. subsidiary Solidigm could violate "dual listing" rules if it pursues an IPO in the United States; however, bargain-hunting funds poured in heavily today, pushing Samsung Electronics up 1.16% and SK Hynix up 0.39%, while Samsung Biologics (+8.71%), LG Energy Solution (+7.20%) and POSCO Holdings (+6.07%) led the broader market surge, and Elice, a South Korean cloud service provider set to list on KOSDAQ tomorrow (raising 201 billion won, the largest IPO of the year), will serve as a touchstone for Asian AI investor confidence.
In contrast, in the Japanese market, Bank of Japan Governor Kazuo Ueda reiterated in the morning that the stance of reducing government bond purchases remains unchanged and warned that it will closely monitor the pace of long-end rate increases to decide whether to intervene, while the International Monetary Fund urged the BOJ to accelerate rate hikes if inflation exceeds expectations; tightening expectations weighed on the Nikkei 225, which closed down 0.62%.
The most brutal story in the Japanese market was NAND flash leader Kioxia: hit by the double blow of doubts over returns on AI capital expenditure and low-price capacity expansion by Chinese NAND manufacturers, compounded by reductions by major shareholder Bain Capital and a stampede of unwinding highly leveraged retail positions in Japan, this giant, which had just overtaken Toyota to become Japan's most valuable company a month ago, saw its market value evaporate by nearly 40 trillion yen from 60 trillion yen in just one month (a two-thirds shrinkage), falling to fourth place in Japan; Daiwa Securities chief strategist Yugo Tsuboi said the market is repricing the peak in global memory prices, and although Kioxia edged up 1.68% today, Tokyo Electron (-2.63%), Fast Retailing (-2.29%) and SoftBank Group (-2.00%) still led the Nikkei lower.
Turning back to the Chinese market, Hong Kong stocks were closed today for the Chung Yeung Festival holiday, while A-shares held up relatively well, boosted by better-than-expected third-quarter GDP (+4.5%) and consumption data. The Shanghai Composite Index rose 0.39%, the Shenzhen Component Index edged up 0.13%, but infected by the global semiconductor deleveraging sentiment, the STAR 50 Index plunged 2.17% and the ChiNext Index fell 0.94%; turnover across the Shanghai, Shenzhen and Beijing markets shrank to 1.45 trillion yuan, with more than 3,100 stocks declining.
Catalyzed by the upcoming 2026 World Physical AI Conference, the humanoid robot and reducer sectors saw a wave of limit-up moves, with Unitree Robotics up 16.15% and returning to a market value of 200 billion yuan, while more than ten stocks including Ningbo Dongli and Zhejiang Rongtai hit limit-up, and military restructuring concept stocks also surged across the board. In addition, safe-haven funds continued to cluster in high-dividend assets, pushing Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (+1.42%, market value 3.07 trillion) and China Construction Bank (+1.05%, market value 3.03 trillion) to record highs, while semiconductor giant ChangXin Technology plunged 7.77% (market value 2.82 trillion, falling to third place among A-shares), and agriculture and real estate sectors also underperformed, with Rongfeng Holding and Jinjian Cereals both hitting limit-down.
Next, focus on:
October 19 (Monday)
9:20: Hong Kong stocks closed, Shanghai-Hong Kong Stock Connect and Shenzhen-Hong Kong Stock Connect suspended; Dongxing Securities and Xinda Securities delisted.
German Chancellor Merz meets Jensen Huang: focus on whether German industrial AI, data centers and sovereign computing cooperation translate into actual investment and orders.
15:00 State Council Information Office "Revitalizing Commerce through Science and Technology" press conference: focus on technology applications and commercial policy, which may catalyze AI applications, retail digitalization and the consumer sector.
Financial Street Forum opens, running through the 22nd: focus on policy remarks from Pan Gongsheng, Wu Qing, Zhu Hexin and others, especially on monetary policy, capital market reform and growth-stabilization measures.
World Bank Global AI and Digital Summit and Shanghai Bund Summit held through the 22nd; RISC-V China Summit runs through the 20th: focus respectively on AI financing and governance, global capital allocation, open-source chips and domestic substitution.
October 20 (Tuesday)
NVIDIA GTC Berlin conference opens, running through the 22nd: focus on AI chip architecture, inference, robotics and European customer orders, and judge whether technological breakthroughs can translate into revenue.
APEC Finance Ministers' Meeting held in Hong Kong through the 21st; 12:15 ECB Chief Economist Lane speaks: focus on fiscal cooperation and digital infrastructure financing messages from Lan Fo'an's chairing of the meeting, as well as European monetary policy signals.
U.S. earnings: GE Aerospace, RTX, 3M, General Motors pre-market; Netflix, SpaceX after the close.
October 21 (Wednesday)
08:00 South Korea's first 20 days of October import and export data: focus on semiconductor exports to judge whether HBM, DDR5 and AI memory demand remain strong.
Jensen Huang's GTC keynote: European sovereign AI, inference demand, new architecture and scale of cooperation are the focus; the market needs clear orders, not just long-term vision.
World Intelligent Connected Vehicles Conference opens; China-Europe Investment, Trade and Technology Cooperation Fair held through the 23rd: focus on autonomous driving, vehicle-road-cloud standards and cross-border industrial cooperation.
Bessent and Druckenmiller attend the JPMorgan-Robinhood investor conference: the meeting is closed to the media; if public information emerges, focus on fiscal financing, interest rates and market risk judgments.
U.S. earnings: IBM, AT&T pre-market; Meta, Tesla, Lam Research, Texas Instruments after the close.