Bitcoin clawed back above $115,000 after a whiplash weekend for risk assets, but the rebound feels more like a reflex than a conviction bid. The spark was political, not crypto-native: on Friday, Oct. 10, Donald Trump posted on Truth Social that he intends to slap 100% tariffs on all Chinese imports from Nov. 1. That headline detonated across global markets and sent crypto into a leverage woodchipper, with Bitcoin briefly knifing through $102,000 and Ethereum slipping under $3,800 before dip buyers showed up.

Bitcoin has ranged around $115,000 over the last 24 hours, source: BNC

Liquidations were epic by any standard, wiping out a broad swath of overextended longs and turning “up only” sentiment into an anatomy lesson on leverage. Pre-crash, betting markets like were pricing in fresh all-time highs. One well-timed short evidently caught the move and walked away with a haul, but the larger story is how quickly positioning reset once forced sellers were cleared out. That’s the paradox of crypto crashes: they’re brutal, and then they’re cleansing.

Post-flush, Bitcoin is up off its 200-day EMA and holding the line, yet the internals aren’t screaming escape velocity. Trend strength has just clicked into “on” rather than “strong,” momentum gauges hover around neutral, and price hasn’t convincingly reclaimed the short-term moving averages that bulls love to see after a real bottom. Translation: structure is still bullish, but buyers are auditioning, not headlining. Until $118K–$120K is taken and kept, range behavior between roughly $110K and $125K remains the base case.

Ethereum’s bounce is similar but softer under the hood. Reclaiming the low $4,000s looks good in a headline, yet ETH’s trend strength lags Bitcoin’s, suggesting rallies may wander without much follow-through until momentum improves. The long-term picture—short-term averages above long-term ones—stays constructive, and seasonality has historically favored ETH in Q4. But seasonality is a tailwind, not a trigger; it won’t substitute for actual demand.

ETH is up on Monday to sit at $4,266, Source: BNC

Solana, ever the time-frame brawler, is flashing bearish tells on the shorter horizon while its longer-term structure stays intact. That kind of split view usually resolves only after Bitcoin chooses a direction. Expect chopsaw price action and sharp mean-reversion until a catalyst—macro or crypto-native—forces a break.

The broader question is whether this was the cathartic flush a late-stage bull market needed or the first crack in the façade. The case for “healthy purge” is straightforward: less leverage, cleaner books, and fewer weak hands. The case for caution: a politically induced shock rarely resolves in a single headline; tariff risk can metastasize across supply chains, earnings, and rates—all of which feed back into liquidity and risk appetite. In other words, the market’s engine is on, but the RPMs aren’t there yet.

Near term, traders are leaning bullish again—prediction markets assign high odds to BTC holding above the $112K area and revisiting $120K before $100K. But sentiment has a short memory. If BTC can reclaim and build above the pre-crash congestion, momentum funds will chase. If it fumbles and loses the $110Ks, last week’s “cleansing” becomes this week’s “warning.” For now, it’s a reset, not a renaissance.

 

---

Filed under: Bitcoin - @ October 13, 2025 8:25 pm