Bitcoin Slides to About $81,000 as Spot ETFs Flip From $1 Billion of Inflows to a $635 Million Outflow
Bitcoin failed to hold $84,000 and dropped toward $81,000 as AI and oil worries hit risk assets, and SoSoValue data show the biggest one-day ETF outflow since June.
Friday, October 23, 2026/2 min read
Bitcoin's push towards $85,000 ran out of steam on Thursday. After touching about $84,778, the price reversed, dipped to a low near $80,989 and was trading around $81,450 early on Friday, a drop of 0.97 percent on the day, crypto.news reported.
The reversal came as US spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds recorded net outflows of $635.49 million on Thursday, per SoSoValue data cited in the same report. That ended a run of three inflow days that had brought in about $1.08 billion and was the largest one-day outflow since 25 June.
How big was the swing in ETF flows?
On Wednesday the picture looked healthy. The Block reported $528.4 million of inflows, led by BlackRock's IBIT with $235 million and Fidelity's FBTC with $212.7 million, together about 85 percent of the day. Ether funds took in $14.9 million, ending a five-session streak of outflows. A different tracker, Lookonchain, posted a gain of about $470 million labelled for Thursday, but crypto.news noted that figure did not match a completed US session, so the SoSoValue number is the one to treat as preliminary but best supported.
Why is bitcoin falling?
Analysts offered several explanations, none certain. FXStreet wrote that buyers looked exhausted even as ETF money came in, and a related headline linked the sell-off to AI spending worries, higher oil prices and US-Iran tension. Brent crude reached $113 and the Nasdaq fell 2.6 percent on Thursday, as we covered in our market report. One analyst told crypto.news the oil link to bitcoin should not be assumed to be direct.
Leveraged traders paid. CoinGlass showed about $406 million of liquidations across crypto in 24 hours. Ether slid towards $2,400 and XRP to around $1.33.
The longer view is steadier. The Block put cumulative net inflows into US spot bitcoin funds at about $58 billion since January 2024, with net assets of $109.3 billion, per SoSoValue. Even so, October's net flows were about $174.5 million negative after Thursday, crypto.news said. XRP funds, by contrast, drew roughly $709,000 on Wednesday, according to FXStreet.
What levels matter now?
Analyst Michael van de Poppe called bitcoin "kind of in nomansland," flagging $82,900 as a level that would invalidate the recent downtrend, while others pointed to $81,000 to $82,000 as channel support and $80,000 as the area to defend. Losing it could open a deeper fall, one trader warned, and analyst Alex Marzell sketched a downside scenario near $75,000. Friday's ETF flow figures will show whether buyers return or the Thursday outflow was the start of a trend, and with oil, AI shares and the Iran story all moving at once, the next sharp move in equities is likely to be shared by crypto.
Published in The Outspoken Digest
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