Bitcoin slipped below $107,000 in Friday’s Asian session, extending a slow drift lower as macro uncertainty and liquidity stress kept traders cautious across crypto markets.
“The rally on Sunday and Monday failed to develop and the 50-day moving average acted as local resistance,” Alex Kuptsikevich, FxPro chief market analyst, noted in an email. “The market is again testing the strength of 3-month support near current levels. Such persistence from the bears suggests that the next phase will be a test of the 200-day moving average, which passes through $3.5 trillion.”
“The market broke above this limit in May; touching it in late July triggered strong buying,” Kuptsikevich said, hinting at levels to watch.
The market’s recovery from last week’s liquidation shock appears to have fizzled out, with a rally earlier this week reversed and major tokens drifting lower each day.
Ether traded around $3,895, while BNB, Solana and XRP fell between 5% and 7% – each giving back most of their post-crash bounce. and Cardano’s ADA is down over 20% week-to-date amid a lack of speculative fervor.
The tone in risk markets soured overnight as traders rotated back to stablecoins and shunned bitcoin and smaller tokens ahead of key Federal Reserve and geopolitical catalysts.
“Altcoins are under pressure as liquidity continues to rotate back to Bitcoin and stablecoins amid risk-off sentiment,” Wenny C., COO at SynFutures, said in a note to CoinDesk, adding that thinner order books have amplified volatility across secondary markets.
Despite the red screens, analysts say the pullback looks more like a controlled deleveraging than panic. Open interest has fallen to mid-year lows and ETF inflows remain steady, suggesting long-term capital is tight.
“This latest decline reflects declining speculative appetite after last week’s macro data,” Wenny said, noting that “structurally, nothing has really changed.”
Nassar Achkar, Chief Strategy Officer at CoinW, said leverage flushes tend to create cleaner bases.
“Bright ETF inflows and whale accumulation are stabilizing markets. The path to a sustained recovery will depend on how quickly this underlying capital is converted into fresh risk-taking,” Achkar told CoinDesk.
Focus now shifts to the Federal Reserve’s FOMC meeting in October, where traders will look for strong dovish talk after Chairman Jerome Powell hinted last week that quantitative easing could end soon.
Futures imply a 65% chance of a 25 basis point cut, which would extend risk support to the end of the year if confirmed.
Outside of crypto, gold briefly hit a fresh record before pulling back, while the yen strengthened on bids following renewed US-China trade tensions. The standoff has added volatility across commodities and stocks, dragging Asian stocks to their lowest levels in two weeks.
Still, some see opportunities in the turbulence. Former BitMEX CEO Arthur Hayes called the pullout a “buying window,” while K33 Research said reduced leverage leaves “room to rebuild BTC positions.”
The current reset reflects previous cycle breaks where leverage blew out before new capital rotated back in. Whether that rotation comes before or after the next Fed signal will likely determine the rest of October.
