Bitcoin Stalls in the $84,000 Cost-Basis Cluster as Leverage Drains

Bitcoin spent Tuesday inside the price band where more of the supply was last bought than at any other level. Glassnode puts that cluster at $84,000 to $85,000, inside a wider zone of $81,000 to $86,000 that has contained the price for a week. A cost-basis cluster is the level at which a large block of coins last changed hands, and it tends to act as floor and ceiling at once, because the holders inside it are close to break-even. What has changed is the leverage behind the price. Coin-denominated open interest has fallen about 20% to its lowest since March, on the Glassnode figures The Block carried Tuesday morning.

Where the coins were bought

The cluster is not the only line on this chart. Bitfinex, in a note published Monday, sets cost-basis resistance a little higher, at $85,000 to $86,500, and counts more than 650,000 BTC sitting in that range. JPMorgan's estimate of what it costs to produce a coin is $85,000, which lands in the same neighbourhood without being the same measure. Above all of it is the yearly open at $87,722, a level bitcoin has not recovered. Below it, Bitfinex marks support at $77,000 and puts the average cost basis of the US spot ETFs at $81,722.

Depth is doing some of the work here too. gokhshtein, citing River Financial, reports that 81% of circulating bitcoin has not moved in six months, leaving an active float near 3.7 million coins against 16.3 million dormant. That reading is single-sourced and the underlying dashboard was not checked directly. It fits the cluster holding. It does not prove it.

Two open-interest numbers, two units

The figure that says leverage has drained comes in two versions. The Block and Bloomingbit give the coin-denominated series: down about 20%, the lowest since March. Bitfinex's own note gives dollars, with open interest off roughly 10% to under $55 billion after a peak of $61.57 billion on 23 September. These are not the same measure, and a coin series and a dollar series can move by different amounts in one week without either being wrong. Neither account mentions the other. Weekly liquidations came to $581 million on Bitfinex's tally, $438 million of it longs, and margin longs shrank slightly, from 90,639 to 90,408 BTC.

The bid is spot, not futures

US spot ETFs absorbed about 27,800 BTC last week, the largest weekly figure since October 2025. The dollar total attached to it does not quite settle. Bitfinex's note says $2.38 billion and gokhshtein, citing Bitfinex, says $2.39 billion, with no as-of difference given for either. Who is hedging that supply matters more than the rounding. Bitfinex reckons CME leverage covers only about 15% of what the funds took in. Flows turned positive for the year last week, and no reading for Monday or Tuesday was available at the time of writing.

What the real yield is asking

The pressure is coming from bonds. The 10-year Treasury yield was 5.17% on 25 September against 5.01% on 16 September, and the inflation-adjusted version rose to 2.83% from 2.68% over the same stretch, on Bitfinex's figures. By Tuesday's small hours CoinDesk had the 10-year at 5.25%, a basis point higher and the highest since 2007. Bitcoin first slipped under $84,000 on that yield story five days ago. A rising risk-free return is the plainest reason for an asset that pays nothing to stall.

"Bitcoin has pulled back to $83K, testing the lower boundary of last week's consolidation range," Alex Kuptsikevich of FxPro said.

That reading was taken overnight. CoinDesk had bitcoin at $83,100 at 04:17 UTC, gokhshtein had $84,381 later in the day, and The Block had about $84,000 at 15:09 UTC. Three hours, three prices, and a September that Bitfinex counts as up 6.1% while gokhshtein puts it near 7%. What nobody has published is how much of the $84,000 cluster actually traded this week, and that is the number that would say whether the band is being absorbed or only defended.