Bitcoin held above $86,000 on Monday after a weak US jobs report pushed traders to drop bets on a Federal Reserve rate hike this month, leaving the largest cryptocurrency close to its eight-month high.
The coin opened the session at $86,513, up 2.1% from Sunday’s open, before easing to about $86,120 in morning trading, according to Yahoo Finance market data. On Sunday it came within roughly $500 of $87,000, a level it has not cleared since late September.
The move followed Friday’s employment situation report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which showed US employers added just 29,000 nonfarm jobs in September against expectations near 84,000. Unemployment rose to 4.2% and wage growth slowed to 3% year over year, the slowest pace since May 2021.
QCP Capital, a digital asset trading firm, said the soft payroll reading led traders to abandon bets on a quarter-point hike at the Fed’s October 27-28 meeting. The central bank raised rates to a range of 3.75% to 4% on September 16, its first increase since 2023, and had been expected to push higher again.
Why rates matter to bitcoin
Crypto has traded this year as a rate-sensitive asset through the Fed’s tightening cycle. Higher bond yields pull capital toward Treasury instruments, and the 10-year yield was at 5.17% in early October, a level that competes directly with zero-yield assets like bitcoin.
With payrolls weakening, Treasury yields eased and global equity markets extended gains, removing some of that pressure. Ethereum opened the session at $2,726.72, up 1.5% from Sunday, and traded near $2,718 by mid-morning.
Futures markets had already cut the probability of a further October hike to roughly 25% before the jobs report, and the weak data pushed expectation further toward a pause. Attention now shifts to December, where pricing still leans toward tightening.
The rate backdrop cuts both ways for crypto, and the trade is not uniform across the sector. A CryptoSlate analysis published October 4 noted that the same Fed hike that pressures bitcoin prices actually increases the income earned on billions of dollars in stablecoin reserves, which are largely held in short-term Treasury instruments. Holders of yield-bearing stablecoins benefit from higher rates while leveraged bitcoin borrowers face costlier debt. The September hike, in other words, helped one part of the crypto economy while hurting another.
ETF flows tell a softer story
Price strength has not matched fund demand. Daily spot bitcoin ETF inflows collapsed from nearly $1 billion to $134 million in the final days of September, a slowdown analysts said signaled fading momentum heading into October.
The week of Sep 28 to Oct 2 brought provisional net inflows of $82.9 million, a sharp drop from $2.39 billion the prior week, according to Farside Investors data cited by Coinbird. Money came in on four of five trading days, with Wednesday seeing withdrawals and Friday’s figures for BlackRock’s IBIT still pending.
Ethereum funds flipped over the same stretch. US spot ether ETFs posted $118 million in net outflows, reversing the previous week’s $689.8 million in inflows, with Fidelity’s FETH leading losses. Solana ETF inflows shrank to $800,000 from $188.1 million, while a Zcash fund lost $77.6 million.
September as a whole still counted as a strong month. Spot bitcoin ETFs took in roughly $2.7 billion over the month, according to The Block, and the week ending Sep 25 drew about $2.4 billion, the strongest weekly result since October 2025. The recent slowdown reads as a pause in demand rather than a reversal of it, though two soft weeks in a row would change that picture.
A year after the record
Context for the price level matters. Bitcoin is down about 29% from a year ago, when it crossed above $126,000 on October 6, 2025, before pulling back quickly. It sits roughly 34% below that record despite a 44% rally over the past 90 days, and the coin remains down for 2026.
The anniversary lands at an odd moment. The asset is closer to its highs than at any point in the past year, yet the macro calendar that got it here is the same one that could take the gains back. Corporate treasuries have been adding through the rally: Metaplanet bought back 11,000 BTC in Q3 after selling 10,000, and Bitmine pushed its ether stake toward 5% of total supply. That bid helped absorb supply during the summer upswing.
What comes next
Three calendar items frame the rest of October:
| Date | Event | Relevance |
|---|---|---|
| Oct 14 | CPI inflation report | Final inflation print before the Fed meeting |
| Oct 27-28 | FOMC policy meeting | Market now prices a pause rather than a hike |
| Oct 29 | PCE inflation report | Fed’s preferred gauge, lands after the decision |
The CPI report is the last major data release before policymakers gather, and a soft reading would cement the pause trade. A hot print could revive hike bets and reapply pressure to risk assets, including crypto.
Traders also flagged technical resistance. QCP Capital said bitcoin needs to clear $87,200 to open the next leg higher, with the late-September resistance zone still capping rallies. A daily close above that band would confirm the move; repeated rejections at $87,000 would suggest the pause trade is already priced in.
Across the Atlantic, the European Central Bank now expects to relent on rate hikes after one more quarter-point move, rather than the three additional hikes markets expected days ago, easing one more source of global monetary pressure.
For now the market has settled on a simple read: weak jobs, no October hike, bitcoin near $86,000. The CPI print on October 14 decides whether that read survives the week.