Bitcoin defends $80K — Relief bounce or deeper $77K test next?

From 5th to 8th of October, Bitcoin’s [BTC] price slid by 7.59% from a peak of $87,000 to a low of $80,393. Since then, however, it has bounced back to trade at $82.8K at press time.

Now, even though the higher timeframe price structure has remained bullish, the buyers do not have a clear advantage. In fact, elevated market stress signals and net Bitcoin flows into exchanges showed why buyers should remain cautious.

A slight short-term BTC tilt towards caution

According to CryptoQuant, from 7th to 9th of October, 11,325 BTC left exchanges. It was greater than the 7,520 BTC in outflows from 3rd to 9th October, making the net flows inward.

Crypto analyst CoinNiel pointed to other factors, such as the dip in funding rates and the Open Interest decline compared to early October, to urge caution in the short term for the bulls.

While the negative Spot ETF flows and a long squeeze might help explain Bitcoin’s price dip, they have also placed the market under stress.

Bitcoin Stress Index reaches calm zone after a weekly peak of 49.9

The Bitcoin Stress Index measures the intensity of a sell-off through the dominance of market selling, wrote analyst Axel Adler Jr. The weekly peak of 49.9 came on 7th October.