Bitcoin Pulls Back After Rally Amid Options Expiry and Fed Policy Signals

Bitcoin slipped to around $83,600 on Friday, a pullback of roughly 1% from the prior close, as the week's rally took a breather. The dip follows an intraday high near $87,000—territory Bitcoin hadn't touched in months—after it broke out of the $75,000 to $81,000 range that had capped it for weeks.

The move isn't spooking chart-watching traders, though. Bitcoin's daily setup still reads bullish with the 50-day moving average sitting above the 200-day in a pattern known as a golden cross.

Some of Friday's softness has a mechanical explanation. $15.6 billion in Bitcoin options expired on Deribit, and dealers often unwind hedges once that flow clears—a routine event that can jolt prices without breaking the underlying trend.

That would help explain why open interest and 24-hour trading volume both fell sharply, down 14.39% and 13.68% respectively. The liquidations came in fairly balanced too: $161.96 million in long positions against $156.1 million in shorts in the last 24 hours, a pattern that looks more like leverage getting reset than a one-sided flush.

Macro tailwinds are still doing some of the work. The Federal Reserve raised rates 25 basis points to a range of 3.75% to 4% on September 16, its first hike since 2023, but kept buying short-term Treasury bills to keep bank reserves flush—a combination that blunted the hawkish optics and kept risk assets bid.

But that relief didn't last. Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh's post-meeting dot plot projected a median rate of just 4.1% through the end of 2027, signaling only one more hike was likely. Fed Governor Michael Barr said on September 23 that "further policy adjustments are likely needed," a comment that landed alongside a report showing core PCE inflation at 3.4%, near a four-year high.

Odds of an October hike have since climbed to roughly 75% on the CME's FedWatch tool and 68.5% on Myriad Markets, a sharp reversal from where they sat right after the September meeting.

Meanwhile, spot Bitcoin ETFs pulled in another $299.09 million on friday, a smaller number than the single-day hauls recorded earlier in the week—a sign the initial burst of buying is cooling rather than accelerating.

Total crypto market cap sits at $2.87 trillion, down from the $3 trillion-plus level reached earlier this week. The Fear and Greed Index has eased to 72 from a peak of 79, still solidly in "greed" territory, just less euphoric.

Most of the top 10 cryptocurrencies are following Bitcoin lower over the past 24 hours. Ethereum is roughly flat, BNB is down 0.81%, and Tron and Hyperliquid are both in the red. XRP and Solana are the exceptions.

XRP is up 4.37% over the past day and 15.45% over the week, trading near $1.58, at a $99 billion market cap. XRP ETFs notched a nine-day inflow streak worth $1.6 billion in late August, and inflows have continued since as institutional interest appears to build for the token.

Solana is up 3.36% on the day and 9.33% over seven days, changing hands at around $119.84 and a $70 billion market cap.

The network's Alpenglow upgrade, which cuts transaction finality to roughly 150 milliseconds, already cleared a validator governance vote with overwhelming support, though its mainnet activation date remains tentative. Meanwhile, spot Solana ETFs from Fidelity, Grayscale, and VanEck—which launched back in November 2025—continue to see inflows as the upgrade narrative builds.

The next test for Bitcoin arrives fast. September's Personal Consumption Expenditures inflation data lands September 30, followed by the September jobs report on October 2, both capable of resetting rate expectations heading into the fourth quarter.