Bitcoin settled just under $84,000 overnight from Tuesday to Wednesday, up 1.5% over twenty-four hours, according to Journal du Coin. The signal came from New York, not from the crypto market: John Williams, president of the New York Fed, said on Tuesday that he saw no need to raise rates further in 2027. The previous night, a very heavy session on the Seoul stock exchange had sent it down to $81,200. This Wednesday, October 14, US inflation for September, released at 14:30, should show whether this respite holds.
October 13 to 14: the sequence
- 2h, Paris time: the Seoul stock exchange opens down 3.1%.
- 0:50 UTC: according to Unchained, cited by Journal du Coin, bitcoin hits around $81,200, its low of the night, less than an hour after the Korean open.
- As the session unfolds: the Kospi, Seoul's main index, falls below 6,000 points and loses more than 7% at the worst point of the day. A “sidecar”, a circuit breaker that freezes orders from trading programs for five minutes, is triggered for the first time in nearly two months.
- Tuesday morning: bitcoin is already climbing back towards $83,700, $2,500 above its floor, while Seoul is still falling.
- Close in Seoul: 6,035.35 points, or −5.46% on the previous day, according to the Korea Exchange as reported by the Korea JoongAng Daily. Samsung Electronics drops 7.39% to 232,000 won, SK Hynix 10.09% to 1.44 million won. Foreign investors were net sellers of 4,510 billion won, or $3.35 billion.
- Wednesday, 9:10 Seoul time: the Kospi regains 1.91% to 6,150.70 points, Samsung gains 3.23% and SK Hynix 2.63%.
Journal du Coin cites three reasons: doubts about OpenAI's revenues, the end of share buybacks by Korean manufacturers and progress by China's CXMT in memory chips. It was the Kospi's fifth consecutive decline, −13.83% over the period.
What John Williams said
In an interview with Bloomberg, the president of the New York Fed judged one additional rate hike “appropriate” this year, with no need to add another in 2027. He points to “disinflationary forces at work”, a labour market that is not feeding prices and pressure limited to the artificial intelligence and energy sectors. In his view, the September hike was a matter of “risk management”.
Markets mainly took note of the second half of the sentence. The dollar fell back and long-term borrowing rates declined. According to CoinDesk, bitcoin was trading just under $83,900 on Wednesday morning in Asia. One speech does not make a policy, however: last Thursday, Governor Christopher Waller judged that further hikes would probably be needed, while remaining flexible on the timing.
Rates, risk assets and leverage
Bitcoin is sensitive to the cost of money: when the market anticipates rate hikes, yields and the dollar rise, two headwinds for risk assets. Journal du Coin recalls the chain: expensive oil feeds inflation, hence rate hikes, hence pressure on these assets. Brent was trading at around $106 a barrel after new attacks in the Middle East, and the dollar index stood on Tuesday at around 102.50, its highest since April 2025.
Leverage explains the speed of Tuesday's move. When a broker demands additional collateral on shares bought on credit (the margin call), the investor sells whatever sells quickly, and crypto trades 24 hours a day. And Korean retail investors are among the largest holders of digital assets in the world. Tom Lee, chairman of BitMine, mentioned on X “margin liquidations at brokers”. On the crypto side, platforms then forcibly close leveraged positions with insufficient collateral: as a reminder, these liquidations reached $771 million over 24 hours, including $685.6 million in bullish bets, according to Unchained.
US bitcoin ETFs recorded net inflows of $109.8 million on Tuesday, including $103.1 million for Fidelity, according to Farside Investors. Since October 5, however, their net outflows have reached $634 million over seven sessions.
This Wednesday's events
US inflation, 14:30. The Bureau of Labor Statistics releases the September consumer price index (CPI) at 8:30 in Washington. Published forecasts diverge, including from one Journal du Coin article to another. According to its daily calendar, investinglive expects +0.6% month on month and 3.6% year on year, compared with 3.4% in August, and Schwab puts it at 3.7%; core inflation, excluding energy and food, is expected to slow to +0.2% on the month and come in at 2.5% year on year, compared with 2.4%. Another article on the site mentions a consensus of 3.7% year on year and 2.4% excluding energy and food; a third attributes to InvestingLive an expectation of around 3.7% year on year. Traders will mainly watch whether the rise comes from energy or from core inflation.
Bank earnings, before 15:30. Bank of America, Morgan Stanley and BlackRock publish their third-quarter results before the Wall Street open (9:30 in New York). According to Digrin, estimates point to $1.16 per share and $31.3 billion in revenue for Bank of America, $3.17 for Morgan Stanley and $14.40 for BlackRock. BlackRock, which manages the IBIT bitcoin ETF, is of direct interest to the crypto market.
Beige Book, 20h. The Fed publishes this collection of business accounts from its twelve districts at 14h in Washington, or 20h in Paris according to Kiplinger. Only Wall Street and the crypto market will still be able to react at that hour.
The odds for October 28. August's CPI had pushed the chances of a hike in September above 85%, and the Fed voted for it on the 16th. For the October 27–28 meeting, CME FedWatch gave, as of October 13, only a 22.1% chance of a new hike, compared with 42.5% a month earlier. The PPI and retail sales will follow on Thursday, October 15, at 14:30.
