Bitcoin drops to $81,400 as Asian chip stocks tumble, options traders seek downside protection

Bitcoin BTC$81,462.69 slipped to around $81,400 on Tuesday, down 0.5% since midnight UTC, even after U.S. spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds attracted $526.6 million on Monday, their largest daily inflow in nearly a month.

Asian stocks set the tone, with South Korea’s benchmark Kospi index falling 3.73% to its lowest close since April 7 as SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics declined with renewed worries over AI spending weighing on chipmakers’ shares. Nasdaq 100 futures fell 0.31%.

Altcoin losses were broadly in line with bitcoin. Ether ETH$2,386.34 fell 0.9% to near $2,385 and the CoinDesk 80 (CD80) lost 0.34%, compared with a 0.33% drop for the bitcoin-heavy CoinDesk 5 (CD5). DeFi gave back Monday’s lead, with the sector index (DFX) dropping 1.2%, the weakest of the CoinDesk benchmarks.

Brent crude is near $110 a barrel as Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia keep supply risks in view. Roughly 70 S&P 500 companies report earnings this week, with General Motors before the bell and United Airlines after the close.

Derivatives positioning

• Bitcoin open interest on Coinalyze fell to $27.4 billion, down 0.6% over 24 hours, while the aggregated funding rate was roughly 8.8% annualized. Ether’s funding of about 3.9% annualized suggests a bullish bias among traders.
• Longs hold around 55% of bitcoin positions, Coinalyze data shows, with a long/short ratio of 1.24. Binance’s top traders show a similar tilt, with a BTC-USDT position ratio of 1.78 on CoinGlass.
• Puts outtraded calls by more than two to one on Deribit over 24 hours, with the Oct. 30 $80,000 put the busiest contract. Out-of-the-money puts also cost more than equivalent calls, by 2.5 to 4 volatility points across expiries, a bearish skew that shows traders paying for downside protection even as open interest leans toward calls at $90,000-$100,000 for Oct. 30.
• CoinGlass shows $155.1 million of liquidations over 24 hours, down 54.7% from the previous day, with longs about 69% of the total on CoinMarketCap’s tally. Bitcoin and ether each saw around $30 million on Coinalyze, together about half of the $120.6 million it tracked.