Bitcoin broke below $81,000 at around 4:40 a.m. Paris time on Thursday, October 15, before sliding to $80,444, Journal du Coin reports. The price then climbed back towards $81,500. In the meantime, more than one billion dollars in positions were wiped out in 24 hours, nearly $485 million of them in the single hour that followed the break. Bets on a rise account for more than 90% of the bill.

The day before, the release of US inflation figures had already pushed bitcoin down from $83,700 to $82,800. Liquidations then took over during the Asian session.

The mechanics of liquidations

A liquidation is the automatic closing of a position financed on credit when the loss exceeds the margin deposited. According to data compiled by Crypto Briefing and cited by Journal du Coin, between $480 million and $489 million in positions were liquidated in one hour. Over 24 hours, liquidations of long positions, that is, bets on a rise, amount to between $930 million and $1.05 billion. Short sellers, for their part, were barely affected.

The ground had been prepared for several days, according to the specialist outlet: high open interest, thin liquidity and leveraged buyers clustered at the same levels. When the price breaks a threshold, forced closures follow one after another and feed the decline. “A market that rises on leverage comes down faster than it went up,” Journal du Coin sums up.

The episode remains far from the record: $19 billion had been liquidated on October 10 and 11, 2025.

Ether below $2,400, Zcash leads the declines

Ether fell below $2,400 the minute bitcoin broke through $81,000. Having opened above $2,520 on Wednesday, it hit $2,332 at the low point of the night and was trading at $2,379 at 7 a.m. Paris time, down 5.3% over 24 hours, according to prices recorded by Journal du Coin on CoinGecko. Between $294 million and $333 million in ether positions were liquidated in 24 hours. Over the week, ether is down 7%, compared with 1.4% for bitcoin; the ETH/BTC ratio fell to 0.0292.

Zcash posted the sharpest decline in the top 20. The privacy-focused cryptocurrency was trading at $1,112 at 7 a.m., compared with $1,264 on Wednesday morning, or -11.5% over 24 hours, after a low of $1,093. Having started at $481 at the beginning of its rise, it had reached $1,698 at the end of September. According to Journal du Coin, an asset that has tripled in three months attracts leverage, and that leverage is the first to be purged when bitcoin gives way.

Solana slips six days before Alpenglow

Solana is trading at $103.6, down 3.7% over 24 hours and 10% over the week. According to CoinDesk, cited by Journal du Coin, the Solana Foundation has set the activation of the Alpenglow upgrade for October 21 at around 3 p.m. UTC. The TowerBFT voting system, in place since 2020, is giving way to a direct exchange of votes between validators, with a targeted finality of 150 milliseconds compared with 12.8 seconds today.

Meanwhile, SkyAI, a listed SOL treasury company, now holds only around 600,000 SOL, compared with more than 2 million in mid-September, according to The Block. Some 1.4 million SOL were thus sold in one month, or around $145 million at the current price, Journal du Coin calculates.

US inflation revives the prospect of a Fed hike

The spark came from Washington. Published on Wednesday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the September consumer price index shows 3.7% year on year, higher than August’s 3.4% and the expected 3.6%. The yield on the 10-year US Treasury jumped 9 basis points to 5.31%. The Nasdaq and the Russell 2000 lost 2% on Wednesday, their worst session since July.

Before the release, the market was expecting a pause in October followed by a hike in December. Now, the CME FedWatch tool shows a probability of between 44% and 47% of a rate hike on October 28, depending on the time of reading. The prediction markets Polymarket and Kalshi remain more cautious, at around 37% to 39%. The Fed had already raised its rates in September, a first since 2023. It enters its quiet period on Saturday, October 17, ahead of its meeting on October 27 and 28.

The $80,000 threshold under watch

The $80,000 threshold held overnight, by a margin of $444. Javier Molina, at eToro, warned on Wednesday that a lasting recovery requires genuine spot buying demand, and that mere short covering will not be enough. Yet US spot ETFs recorded several hundred million dollars in net outflows during the session. Conversely, BlackRock reported on Wednesday net inflows of $7.9 billion into its crypto products in the third quarter, for assets under management of $79.6 billion, 23% lower than a year ago.

The altcoin prices cited are those recorded by Journal du Coin on October 15 at 7 a.m. Paris time and may have changed since.

Sources

  • Journal du Coin: “Bitcoin below $81,000: $1 billion liquidated, the Fed spooks the market”
  • Journal du Coin: “ETH below $2,400, Zcash drops 12%, Solana stumbles six days before Alpenglow - The altcoin roundup”