Bitcoin's drop below $80,000 and the sell-off in US tech giant stocks last week is not yet a crash, but it's also no reason to buy everything in sight. The cryptocurrency could fall to $70,000, and the stock market is shifting from faith in endless growth to a check of companies' real profitability.
The market is currently showing a classic behavior pattern amid uncertainty: investors are waiting for a recovery, but price movements keep knocking out leveraged buyers time and again, and there is still no reason to consider the correction over.
Why the Binance hack didn't crash bitcoin
Several major events happened within just a few days. Hackers, presumably linked to the North Korean Lazarus group, withdrew $6.3 billion from Binance — the largest hack in the history of the crypto industry. The attackers gained access to an exchange engineer's laptop and, through the internal withdrawal system, transferred assets to their own wallets. About $3 billion of the stolen funds has already been frozen.
Despite the scale, the market reacted to the news with restraint, unlike the FTX collapse. There are several reasons:
- the hack does not mean bankruptcy — Binance said it will cover the losses itself;
- the frozen $3 billion will not hit the market and will not push the price down;
- bitcoin now has more large players, ETFs and funds that hedge risks and absorb part of the selling, while the influence of retail investors has declined.
Nevertheless, bitcoin played out the downside scenario: the triangle held, the price broke through $80,000 and tested support at $76,500. The height of the pattern is about 10%, so the potential correction target lies around $70,000. The probability of this scenario will increase if $80,000 remains resistance and the intermediate support at $75,000 is broken.
Capital flow data is contradictory. Over four trading days, about $441 million flowed into bitcoin ETFs, but on October 22 alone $636 million was withdrawn from them, and the price continued to decline even amid inflows. The Coinbase Premium Index on October 29 held around minus 0.27%, meaning bitcoin traded cheaper on Coinbase than on other major exchanges — demand from US buyers was weak. At the same time, funding rates remained positive, and more than $430 million in positions were liquidated in a day, mostly longs.
The conclusion is obvious: investors are waiting for a recovery, but the market keeps shaking out leveraged buyers time and again, and there is still no reason to consider the correction over.
Ethereum: trend break and the risk of $2,000
The ETH price broke through the upward trendline and lost support at $2,300; the risk of a decline to $2,000 remains. Money was withdrawn from spot ether ETFs for four days in a row, with outflows totaling almost $300 million over that period. The short scenario will be canceled if the price returns above $2,300 and consolidates there.
What's happening with stocks and why Google is falling
The US stock market lost almost $2 trillion over the week. Google shares fell 12% after its earnings report, Intel lost about 30% in a day, and Amazon and chipmakers came under pressure. At the same time, the S&P 500 index itself declined more modestly. The problem so far concerns not the entire market but its expensive technology leaders.
The reason is not that AI has stopped being promising. Investors have begun asking an inconvenient question: how much money companies will have to spend before artificial intelligence starts generating profit. Macroeconomics added to this. The Fed kept the rate at 3.75–4%, two committee members voted for a hike, and in December the market expects a rate increase.
Fed Chair Jerome Powell said inflation is too high. By the PCE index it was 3.6% against a 2% target. Brent oil returned above $110, and expensive energy feeds into the cost of transport, production and goods. At the same time, the US economy is growing at 3–4%, and that is precisely what gives the Fed no reason to rush rate cuts.
Money is flowing into the dollar, which has been strengthening for the second month in a row, into cash and government bonds. Capital is moving from the technology sector into defensive industries: healthcare, energy, financials, industrials and consumer sectors, where 25 stocks hit all-time highs. Another 2–2.5% decline would bring the S&P 500 to a retest of the upward trend that has held since 2025. Either buyers will defend this level, or a breakout will force the market to revise its growth scenario.
Google's report shows a mixed picture: revenue reached $127.6 billion, up 25% year over year, operating profit rose 30% to $40.6 billion, and the cloud segment increased revenue by 103% to $30.7 billion. Earnings per share, however, fell 26% to $2.12 — mainly due to an $8.6 billion paper revaluation of investments, primarily the stake in SpaceX. The market was alarmed by the slowdown in search revenue growth from 17% to 12%: users are increasingly getting answers through AI, and monetization of such queries lags behind classic advertising.
Among the risks are capital expenditures of $51.4 billion for the quarter, negative free cash flow of $9.1 billion and about $125 billion in debt. The company did not buy back shares and raised capital. Among the arguments for buying are the Anthropic IPO, in which Google is a major investor, and the investment by Berkshire Hathaway, which bought Google shares in the summer at about $350, notably above current prices. The stock's decline is not a sign of business problems but a revaluation of how much the market is willing to pay for future growth.
While bitcoin is below $80,000, the downside scenario remains the priority, and in the stock market it is worth waiting for the reaction at support before buying cheaper shares.
Cryptalist analysis: The current dynamics point to a structural shift of liquidity from risk assets to defensive instruments, and the crypto market is moving in tandem with the US technology segment. Bitcoin's resilience to the Binance hack confirms the maturity of the institutional base, but weak demand on Coinbase and the negative premium index signal a shortage of real buyers. Until it consolidates above $80,000 and ETF inflows recover, the scenario of a test of $70,000 remains dominant.