KEY POINTS
- Bitcoin traded around $68,700 on Friday, down about 4% on the day, after touching roughly $67,500.
- US producer prices rose 0.3% in October, with the annual rate at 6.5%, both 0.1 percentage points under forecasts.
- CoinGlass data shows Bitcoin's fourth-quarter drop of 17.7% is its second-worst quarterly result on record.
Bitcoin was changing hands near $68,700 after the Wall Street open on Friday, Cointelegraph reported, as markets gave a muted response to a US inflation reading that landed slightly under forecasts. TradingView data showed the BTC/USD pair down roughly 4% over the day.
The price had earlier dropped to about $67,500, a level not seen in roughly 12 weeks, before recovering part of the loss.
The US Bureau of Labor Statistics said the Producer Price Index for October rose 0.3% from September and 6.5% from a year earlier. Both figures were 0.1 percentage point lower than analysts expected, although the yearly increase was still the biggest since November 2022. The agency said final demand goods prices climbed 0.5%, while final demand services rose 0.2%.
Equities did not get much relief from the data. The S&P 500 was down 1.2% and the Nasdaq Composite was off 1.5% at the time of writing. According to the report, traders were still weighing news around Nvidia after Jensen Huang, the company's co-founder and CEO, resigned on Thursday.
The inflation figures shifted expectations for monetary policy only slightly. CME Group's FedWatch Tool showed the probability of a 25-basis-point rate hike at the Federal Reserve's December meeting rising from 85.4% on Thursday to 89.7%. The odds of a 50-basis-point move fell from 14.5% to 10.3%.
Economist Robin Brooks called a 25-basis-point increase in December "all but inevitable" but argued against a larger one. He pointed to the oil-price spike linked to the US-Iran war and a possible lasting rise in underlying inflation. In his view, a 75-basis-point hike would do nothing if the problem is oil and the Strait of Hormuz, and would be too timid if underlying inflation has accelerated.
On the technical side, analyst Rekt Capital said last week's weekly candle closed below three levels, at $75,000, $76,800 and $78,300. He wrote on X that the current candle appeared headed for a similar outcome, which he described as a sign that sell-side momentum is still building. He added that a Bitcoin close below $73,000 on Sunday would repeat a support breakdown already seen twice in 2026, and that after each of those, the price fell to around $60,000.
At $68,700, Bitcoin is down 17.7% in the fourth quarter and 11.2% so far this month. CoinGlass data confirms that the quarterly decline is currently the second worst for the asset on record.
