Bitcoin Slides Below $80,000 as Iran Threat Reports Trigger Weekend Selloff

Bitcoin fell below $80,000 over the weekend after the Wall Street Journal reported Saturday that the U.S. is rapidly evacuating personnel from embassies and military bases across the Middle East. In a Friday memo to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton wrote that "Iran has substantially increased efforts to target U.S. personnel." The evacuations extend well beyond earlier reports of diplomatic staff being withdrawn from Saudi Arabia.

BTC traded at $80,160, down 2.4% on the week, according to the newsletter's market data. Ethereum fell 3.8% to $2,322, Solana dropped 3.2% to $101, and the broader CMC20 index lost 2.3%.

How deep are the 30-day losses?

Over 30 days, Bitcoin is down 4.8% while the majors around it average a 16.5% decline — more than three times as much. Ethereum is off 13.6%, Solana 17.1%, XRP 17.4%, Hyperliquid 17.4% and Dogecoin 22.3%.

Privacy tokens bucked the trend. Zcash gained 8% on the week and sits up 135% on the year, while Monero added 37%. The bids arrived in a week when the lead macro story involves governments evacuating personnel ahead of potential attacks.

In the latest tape, BTC trades at $80.2k, ETH at $2,330, SOL at $101.5 and HYPE at $77. Top alt movers include QNT (+17%), PYTH (+6%) and ENA (+5%). Oil fell 2% to $101, gold added 0.4% to $4,025, and stock futures turned slightly green as oil declined.

What happened to the Bloom trading bot?

Solana trading bot Bloom said attackers drained about 9,408 SOL, worth $947,000, from 49 wallets belonging to nine users. The team said attackers exploited a third-party module to gain remote code execution, insisted no private keys were compromised, and pledged to reimburse 100% of stolen funds.

Separately, Electrum patched a flaw that let malicious servers steal funds from users bumping a transaction fee. The wallet had trusted servers to report pending transactions without verifying signatures.

Where are ETF flows pointing?

Spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded $138 million in net outflows on Friday, while ETH ETFs took in $4 million in net inflows — a welcome reversal. Despite Thursday and Friday outflows, BTC ETFs closed the week with roughly $300 million in net inflows.

Wells Fargo, Cisco, Marvell, Arm, Moderna and Intuit joined the list of companies objecting to tokenized versions of their shares on the OKX-ICE venue, bringing the count to 22 companies in eight days.

Onchain revenue for the week was led by Hyperliquid at $14.74 million, followed by Pump at $13.76 million, Papertrade at $6.67 million and Collector Crypt at $5.31 million. Pump.fun also announced a $2.5 million Squads competition starting today and running two weeks, with the top three squads earning prizes based on PNL plus uPNL.

What does the macro calendar hold?

The Federal Reserve decides its next rate move Wednesday at FOMC, with Kevin Warsh's press conference to follow. The ECB meets Thursday and the Bank of Japan Friday. Q3 GDP and September PCE data land Thursday, the same day Coinbase and Strategy report after the bell.

Arguably more important for onchain markets is the Robinhood earnings call on Tuesday, October 27. Open questions include whether Vlad Tenev's team addresses tokenized stock pushback, mentions Robinhood Chain and its memestock ecosystem, or launches a builders grant program — answers that will likely decide the near-term future of that ecosystem. SoFi also reports Tuesday.

Goldman Sachs expects global growth to hold broadly stable through 2027 but sees downside risks from higher energy prices, rising bond yields and slowing AI investment, while arguing that cooling inflation means central banks hike less than expected.

NFT leaders were mostly green: Pudgy +3% at 2.56 ETH, BAYC +5% at 6 ETH, Punks even at 30.7 ETH. With U.S. midterms eight days away and three central bank decisions ahead, traders should expect another volatile week.