Bitcoin Loses $74,000 as October Core Inflation Holds at 0.3%

Bitcoin traded below $74,000 early on Wednesday, a day after US consumer prices for October came in hotter than forecast. The headline index rose 0.4% on the month against expectations of 0.3%, and the core measure, which strips out food and energy, rose 0.3% against 0.2%. Core has now printed 0.3% for a third month running. Treasury yields went up and leveraged positions were cleared out. Three accounts of Wednesday morning give three different prices for bitcoin, and two different totals for what was liquidated.

Four prices, one morning

The level depends on which page is open. KuCoin's daily report put bitcoin at $73,804.1, down 2.06%, with the data stamped as of 00:00 UTC. crypto.news, filing at 4:29 a.m. UTC, had it down nearly 2% at $73,700, while the ticker on its own page read $73,504.00. The Block's ticker, read at about the same hour, gave $73,680.30 and a 1.71% fall with no window attached. Only the KuCoin figure says which moment it describes. The four do not reconcile.

The overnight low is closer to agreement. KuCoin has bitcoin briefly touching roughly $72,700 before trading near $73,500 in the early morning. TradingKey puts the low at about $72,787 and calls it the 21 August low, which no other account this desk read carries. Ether was weaker on the day. KuCoin had it at $2,053.36, down 3.83%, and The Block's ticker gave $2,062.10, down 2.96%.

Two liquidation tallies on two clocks

The clear-out has been counted twice, over windows that are not the same length. crypto.news, citing CoinGlass, put total liquidations at $723 million across nearly 115,600 traders in 24 hours, with longs taking roughly $570 million of it and bitcoin alone accounting for $203 million, split $175 million long and $28 million short. TradingKey gives over $630 million, longs more than 80%, measured around the release itself. One is a day, the other is a moment. They do not reconcile, and this desk is neither adding them together nor choosing between them. KuCoin refers to recent leveraged liquidations and publishes no total at all.

Yields moved and so did the rate talk

The bond market reacted first. TradingKey has the two-year Treasury yield up 14 basis points to around 4.69%, and KuCoin has it up about 18 basis points to 4.73%. The two do not reconcile. On the ten-year, crypto.news says the yield moved above 5% while KuCoin says it approached 5%, which is also unresolved. Fed Governor Christopher Waller was quoted saying a core reading near 0.3% or higher could warrant a 50 basis point increase in December. TradingKey carries the same point in paraphrase.

"The Fed will need to tighten policy further," Waller said in remarks carried by KuCoin's Wednesday report.

No page this desk read carries a market-implied probability for December. TradingKey calls the futures-implied odds of a hike sharply higher and attaches no number, so none is written here. September's print also ran above forecast, and the core rate has not been below 0.3% since.

What traders are watching after the print

Fund flows were negative before Tuesday. Spot bitcoin ETFs lost $201 million on 9 November, a figure crypto.news attributes to Farside Investors and KuCoin also publishes, including $213.2 million out of BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin Trust, with Morgan Stanley's fund taking in $22.1 million. The single-issuer outflow is larger than the whole complex's net number, and neither page explains the gap. Spot ether funds lost $185 million the same day, on KuCoin's count alone. That follows a first week of November in which bitcoin funds shed $1.28 billion.

The levels on offer do not line up either. crypto.news puts immediate support at $73,200 with an hourly swing low at $72,689. KuCoin gives a band of $72,700 to $73,000, and wants $74,500 to $75,000 reclaimed first. TradingKey points at the 200-day moving average between $71,500 and $72,500, then $70,000, then $68,000 below that. The one number all three share is $70,000 as the next stop if support gives way. October producer prices arrive on 13 November, the Fed's minutes on 18 November and the rate decision on 9 December. Wednesday settles none of them.

Read also: Bitcoin Holds the $74,000s Hours Before the October CPI Print