Bitcoin 2026-10-25 daily brief — AI stance: bearish

Market-wide funding is 6.22%/yr open-interest-weighted, with the single major venue at 9.04%/yr. Both sit under the 11%/yr exchange-default neutral baseline, so longs are paying a modest carry that is nowhere near crowded or stretched. Over the last 14 days the OI-weighted rate ran 0.0007% to 0.0097% per 8 hours, roughly 0.8% to 10.6%/yr, and never got hot. The single venue running about 2.8 points above the aggregate says what residual long bias exists is concentrated there, not spread across the market. Funding is not a bearish input; it removes squeeze fuel in both directions.

Aggregate futures open interest is $53.2B, down 4.9% from the $55.9B peak on 2026-10-21 that preceded the -3.33% day; the single venue holds $6.5B of that. Options open interest is $38.8B with $3.5B traded on 2026-10-25. The picture is moderate leverage with longs partially flushed, modest positive funding, and a put bid at its 30-day extreme into FOMC and expiry week. This positioning limits the depth of a cascade but offers no short-squeeze fuel, consistent with a grind lower rather than a crash.

The single-venue feed shows $11.4M long against $5.3M short liquidated on 2026-10-25, a 0.47 ratio with more longs hit, at only the 10th percentile of its one-year range; the heavier venue days were 2026-10-24 at $120.0M long and 2026-10-22 at $81.0M long. Press reports of roughly $820M market-wide liquidations, about 83% longs, as BTC lost 80,000 on 2026-10-25 are not reflected in this venue's daily print, which most likely reflects the UTC cutoff and venue scope. Read together: longs have been the ones stopped out on every down day for two weeks, leverage has been reduced, and the next cascade zone sits below 78,000 where max pain and the 2026-10-30 straddle lower bound of 76,499 cluster.

Coinbase premium is -14.65 bps, the US venue trading at a discount to offshore. That is beyond the +/-10 bps decile threshold and at the edge of the historical p1 near -15 bps. All 14 recent readings are negative, running -8.1 to -14.7 bps, and today is the deepest of the run. Two weeks of offshore-led pricing with the US side consistently the seller is the clearest single piece of evidence that institutional and ETF-channel demand is not absorbing supply at 80,000.

CONFLICT. On-chain valuation is neutral to constructive: cycle NEUTRAL, 2 of 8 bottom triggers, MVRV-Z 0.84 at the 39th percentile, funding 6.22%/yr. The macro tape (Brent $116.72, UMich 48.0, VIX 19.45, Fed hike bias) and the flow tape (Coinbase premium -14.65 bps, $773.5M of late-week ETF outflows) are risk-off. For the 5-7 day window I side with the macro and flow tape. The 28bp drop in the 10-year is a growth scare whose haven bid is going to gold at $4,007, not to BTC, which is trading as the risk asset in that pairing.

ETF flows: the week ended 2026-10-23 netted +$301.2M, but the last two sessions saw $773.5M of outflows, which in the supplied data is -7,815 BTC on 2026-10-22 at a 30-day z-score of -2.07 and -1,700 BTC on 2026-10-23. The 7-day average fell to +356 BTC from +1,559 BTC on 2026-10-21 while the 30-day average held at +756 BTC. These describe the data; their directional meaning is a hypothesis, not demonstrated alpha. Coinbase premium at -14.65 bps marks the US side as the consistent seller. Miners are healthy with hash ribbons at 1.027 and rising and Puell at 1.12 (51st percentile). Long-term holder SOPR printed between 1.01 and 1.56 on 12 of the last 14 days, so older coins are being distributed at a profit into weakness. Network activity is high at 799k transactions (99.7th percentile) while fee per transaction sits at the 9.9th percentile, which points to low-value or batched traffic rather than a demand surge. Calendar inside the window: Galaxy earnings 2026-10-27, FOMC 2026-10-28, PCE and GDP plus Coinbase and Strategy earnings 2026-10-29, the $11B Deribit expiry and BoJ decision 2026-10-30. Later context outside the window: US midterms on 2026-11-03 and nonfarm payrolls on 2026-11-06. The halving cycle is about 30 months past the April 2024 halving, but the cycle monitor reads NEUTRAL with zero top triggers, so this is not read as a cycle-top setup.

Hawkish-leaning hold. Fed funds 3.75% (target range 3.75-4.00%), with the 2026-10-28 FOMC priced at roughly 84-93% for no change and about 76% odds of a quarter-point hike by December. This is a non-SEP meeting, so the statement and press conference carry the whole signal. M2 is growing +5.66% YoY, so money growth is positive, but the 10-year at 4.96%, down from 5.24% on 2026-10-14, is falling on growth fear with oil above $100, not on easier policy. Fear and Greed at 54, Neutral: sentiment has not capitulated, which leaves room for it to.

US 10-year at 4.96%, down 28bp from 5.24% on 2026-10-14 and down 17bp in the single session to 2026-10-24. No credit-spread feed is supplied, so whether credit is confirming the growth scare cannot be read here. A yield drop of this size alongside a priced December hike and $116 Brent is flight to quality and recession hedging, not a liquidity injection.

DXY 101.62, down 0.8% from 102.44 on 2026-10-12 in a slow drift lower. A softer dollar is normally a BTC tailwind, yet BTC fell 2.1% over the same 14 days while gold reached $4,007. The dollar is not the binding constraint, and BTC's failure to respond to it is itself a sign the selling is BTC-specific.

Risk-off tilt. S&P 500 at 7,623.68 on 2026-10-23 is down 2.35% from 7,807.24 on 2026-10-12, with VIX up from 15.21 to 19.45 over the same span; 2026-10-24 and 2026-10-25 are weekend nulls and NDX is not supplied. The drivers are the oil shock (Brent $116.72, WTI $103.38) and University of Michigan sentiment at 48.0. A stagflation tape is the worst equity backdrop for a high-beta asset.

From 80,049: 78,000 is -2.6% and sits inside the 1-sigma straddle range for the 2026-10-30 expiry, so a test this week is roughly even odds or better given the event calendar and max pain. 75,600 to 75,700 is -5.5%, where the 60-day low (75,590), the short-term-holder cost basis implied by STH MVRV 1.057 (about 75,700), and the 2026-11-06 straddle floor (75,672) coincide; that is the 1-sigma lower bound two weeks out, so perhaps a one-in-four outcome inside this window and the main objective if 78,000 fails. The 200-day MA at 72,949 is -8.9% and would need a macro accident on top of the current oil shock, since the cycle monitor shows 2 of 8 bottom triggers and no top triggers. Upside tail: +/-5.45% by 2026-11-06 puts 84,300 in reach, which is the 2026-10-21 high and the first lower high to reclaim.

Moderate. DVOL 38.8 sits at the 33rd percentile of one year and 30-day ATM IV at 36.1% is at the 59th percentile of 90 days, against realized vol of 25.0% (30-day) and 30.1% (7-day), so options carry an 11 to 14 vol-point premium for event risk. The straddle-implied move is +/-1.6% to 2026-10-27 (78,210 to 80,790), +/-2.2% to FOMC day 2026-10-28 (77,753 to 81,247), +/-3.15% to the 2026-10-30 expiry (76,499 to 81,501), and +/-5.45% to 2026-11-06 (75,672 to 84,328). Those are distances the market is charging for, not a direction.