Bitcoin holds near $82,100 as October Fed hike odds fall to about 15%

The rebound is thin, and the open interest figures show how. Bitcoin's notional open interest rose 0.3% while its price gained 1% ^[9]. Notional is contracts multiplied by price, so the number of contracts outstanding fell by about 0.7% ^[20] (1.003 divided by 1.01, less one). CoinDesk's read is that the gains in bitcoin, ether and solana came from traders closing shorts, with little sign of new long positions ^[10].

Some traders are still buying downside protection. Bitcoin at about $82,100 ^[1] is 2.6% above $80,000 ^[17], the strike of the most traded option on Deribit ^[14]. The put spread that Derive flagged early in the week bets on $78,000 ^[13], which is 5.0% under the current level ^[19].

The Fed leg is harder to attribute. The odds of an October hike halved, or rather roughly halved ^[18], because CoinDesk's lead gives the starting point as almost 30% ^[5] and its text as roughly 30% ^[4]. The CME FedWatch reading is now about 15% ^[4]. Treasury yields were largely stable ^[6]. CoinDesk reports the speech and the repricing in one sentence and does not say what moved the number, so on this evidence we would not credit Warsh's silence alone.

We think the bounce is closer to short covering than to a new trend, and the same tape supports a second reading. Annualized perpetual funding rates sit between 5% and 10%, and CoinDesk says that shows a bias toward longs but nothing out of the ordinary, with room for further gains ^[11]. Both can hold: a rebound built on closing shorts can run further in an uncrowded market. Bitcoin open interest growing faster than price on the next rise would prove us wrong. ZEC already shows that pattern, with open interest up 14% against an 11.5% price gain ^[16], though it is one token. The third path is the Fed. A hike is a minority outcome at about 15% ^[4], but we would expect one to send bitcoin back toward the $80,000 puts.