Bitcoin Falls Below $83K as Fed Minutes Flag Another Hike, Oil Tops $100 on Mideast Tensions

Fed Minutes Keep Another Hike on the Table

Minutes from the Federal Reserve’s September 15-16 meeting, released Tuesday, showed most officials believe another quarter-point rate increase “could be appropriate before the end of 2026,” though the committee set no specific timing. That meeting delivered the Fed’s first hike since 2023, lifting the benchmark rate a quarter point to a range of 3.75%-4.00% — a move we covered in detail in our report on the September decision. Markets aren’t pricing a near-term repeat: CME FedWatch data on Thursday implied only about an 18% probability of a hike at the October 27-28 meeting. Even so, the minutes’ tone was enough to firm up the dollar and push the 10-year Treasury yield toward 5.36% on Wednesday, extending the multi-decade highs we detailed in this week’s Treasury yield coverage.

Crypto desks note the Bitcoin and Ether slide actually began before Tuesday’s minutes dropped, so the hawkish tone isn’t the sole driver — but it has reinforced a “higher for longer” narrative that’s weighing on rate-sensitive risk assets broadly. Derivatives data from CoinGlass showed roughly $550 million to $696 million in crypto long liquidations over the past 24 hours, even as Bitcoin open interest actually rose from about $54.2 billion to $55.3 billion, with funding rates staying positive — a sign leveraged longs are being flushed out rather than traders turning broadly bearish.

Oil Tops $100 as Middle East Tensions Escalate

Brent crude futures traded above $105 a barrel Thursday, driven by at least nine reported attacks in the Strait of Hormuz so far this month amid the ongoing U.S.-Iran conflict, plus a tropical storm approaching the Gulf Coast that has prompted Chevron to evacuate nonessential personnel from offshore platforms. The combination of a geopolitical risk premium and weather-driven supply disruption is feeding directly into inflation concerns — the same concerns the Fed’s minutes flagged as a reason further tightening could still be needed. For risk assets, that’s a double squeeze: higher energy costs pressure consumer spending and corporate margins, while a more hawkish Fed path raises the discount rate applied to longer-duration and higher-beta assets like crypto and growth equities alike, a dynamic also visible in this week’s narrowing equity market breadth.

Where This Leaves Bitcoin

Thursday’s drop extends a pullback from the $86,000-$87,000 range Bitcoin held earlier this week — territory covered in our October 7 update on new leveraged crypto ETPs and our October 2 look at Bitcoin’s push back above $85,000. BTC remains about 32% below its October 2025 all-time high above $126,000, and its 100-day and 200-day moving averages near $72,000 still sit well under current levels, leaving the broader uptrend technically intact even after this week’s slide. On the institutional side, U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs pulled in roughly $6.3 billion in net inflows during the third quarter — a reminder that longer-horizon demand hasn’t disappeared just because short-term price action has turned choppy. Immediate support sits in the $82,500-$83,000 zone, with $81,000 seen as the more critical level below that; on the upside, bulls need a reclaim of the $86,700-$87,000 area to rebuild confidence.

Why It Matters

This week’s action is a reminder that crypto doesn’t trade in isolation from the macro backdrop: Fed policy expectations, Treasury yields, and now an oil-driven inflation scare are all pulling on Bitcoin and Ether at the same time. For crypto-adjacent equities rather than the coins themselves, our Big Digital Energy (BGDE) fact sheet covers one of the smaller-cap names most directly levered to crypto infrastructure demand. Browse our full lineup of coverage on the Stock Fact Sheets hub.