No. 7Tuesday, 27 October 20266 min read

Eleven of the twelve bitcoin ETFs sold $1.07bn in October

BlackRock's fund took in $865m over the same eighteen sessions; Fidelity's gave back $589m.

BTC $79,559 -1.0%ETH $2,305 -1.1%SOL $99.63 -1.9%XRP $1.29 +0.3%

Good morning. Bitcoin is $79,559, down 1.0%, after its first close below $80,000 since 17 September. Eleven of the twelve US spot bitcoin funds have been net sellers this month, $1.07bn between them, while BlackRock's took in $865m. The Federal Reserve decides on 28 October and $10.8bn of bitcoin options expire on 30 October.

The tape

24-hour change: Q +42.8%, HUMA +42.7%, CAP +22.3%, XRP +0.3%, BTC -1.0%, ETH -1.1%, SOL -1.9%, BTW -10.2%, RAIN -11.8%, IRYS -14.6% — Three gainers above 20% and no major down more than 2%. As of 10:07 UTC, 27 Oct 2026.

Bitcoin (BTC) $79,559, -1.0% on the day, -2.2% on the week, -6.1% over 30 days. Ether (ETH) $2,305.07, -1.1% and -14.9%. Solana (SOL) $99.63, -1.9% and -19.7%, under $100 for the first time this month. XRP is the only major up, +0.3% to $1.29. Bitcoin is 60.0% of the $2.66tn of crypto value.

The tails did the work. Infinity Ground (AIN), which sells infrastructure for building apps from written prompts, rose 243.2% on $87.6m of volume against a $25.5m market value: 3.4 times its own worth in a day. Quack AI (Q), a governance layer for software agents, added 42.8%. Irys (IRYS), a layer-1 chain that stores data alongside contracts, fell 14.6% after doubling on the week.

Where to look

Six things today, in order: Wednesday's Federal Reserve decision, retail longs at a high, Friday's $10.8bn options expiry, futures basis over bills, stablecoin supply falling again, Balancer's shutdown vote closing.

Open interest for the 30 October bitcoin expiry by strike: $95,000 call 19,951 contracts, $100,000 call 11,284, $90,000 call 10,721, then puts at $70,000 and $75,000 — Three call strikes hold 31% of Friday's expiry. As of 10:08 UTC, 27 Oct 2026.

01
The Federal Reserve decides on 28 October at 18:00 UTC, and the market gives bitcoin a 40.5% chance of being above $80,000 that day.
Polymarket prices $78,000 at 85.2% and $82,000 at 7.5%. The two-year Treasury yield is 4.68% against a 3.75-4.00% policy rate.
WatchThat $80,000 market above 50% before the decision.
02
Retail accounts on OKX are 2.35 long for every one short in bitcoin, a 30-day high, against 1.21 a week ago.
Ether is 2.71, Solana 3.12, dogecoin 4.86, on $2.62bn of bitcoin open interest there. Retail doubled its long bias while bitcoin fell 6.0% from its 21 October close of $84,623. That is how a flush starts.
WatchA bitcoin close under $78,000 with the ratio still above 2.0.
03
$10.8bn of bitcoin options expire on 30 October and 31% of that sits in calls struck at $90,000 or higher.
The expiry holds 135,357 contracts, 87,375 calls against 47,983 puts, a put/call ratio of 0.55. The largest line is 19,951 contracts at $95,000, 19% above spot, marked at $0.81 each.
WatchWhether that interest rolls into 27 November, which holds 39,485 contracts, or expires worthless.
04
The 25 December future pays 5.63% annualised against a 4.22% three-month Treasury bill, a spread of 141bp.

The deep dive

Eleven of the twelve US spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds have been net sellers this month: $1.07bn left them across the eighteen sessions from 1 to 26 October, while BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) took in $865m. We summed the per-fund daily flows for those sessions.

Net flow per US spot bitcoin ETF, 1-26 October 2026: IBIT +$865m, every other fund between +$30m and -$589m — IBIT took $865m; the other eleven net minus $1.07bn. As of 10:08 UTC, 27 Oct 2026.

The complex lost $202m over the month: the number the wires print. Underneath it, Fidelity's Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund (FBTC) gave back $589m, ARK 21Shares' ARKB $315m, Grayscale's GBTC $131m and Bitwise's BITB $68m. Only five other funds took in anything at all, $48m between them.

Size does not explain it. IBIT holds $65.9bn of the complex's $102.8bn of net assets, 64%. Had October's flow followed size, IBIT would have lost $130m alongside everyone else. Nor does price: the cheapest fund in the complex, Morgan Stanley's Bitcoin Trust at 0.14% a year, took in $30m.

Holders are not the sellers. They moved $2.64bn of bitcoin off exchanges over 30 days, and exchange-held supply fell from $226.3bn to $215.4bn, so the selling comes out of the funds.

The limit is that this is one month old. In the twelve sessions from 15 to 30 September the same eleven funds took in $940m, and on 21 October they bought $293m against IBIT's $235m. What would prove this wrong: a week in which Fidelity's fund takes money in while IBIT does not.

The news

Ripple won final approval for a national trust bank, putting its stablecoin's reserves under federal supervision. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency cleared Ripple National Trust Bank on 26 October to hold the segregated reserves behind Ripple USD (RLUSD) and act as collateral trustee; it cannot take deposits. RLUSD added $125m that day to $2.59bn, the only large dollar token still growing.
Kraken's parent will be the first federally regulated firm to list markets on Hyperliquid. Payward was named on 26 October as the first deployer regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission under HIP-3, which lets outside firms launch perpetual futures there. Hyperliquid's perpetuals earned $2.73m of fees in 24 hours, up 61.3%, and its chain holds $6.75bn of USDC against Solana's $6.60bn.
Strategy skipped its weekly bitcoin purchase for the first time since mid-September, buying its own preferred stock instead. It disclosed on 26 October that it bought back 2,068,459 STRC preferred shares for $204.9m and still holds 848,517 bitcoin bought for $64.02bn, $75,446 a coin. Earnings land on 29 October with $956.8m left in the programme.
A Zcash co-founder proposed ending the grants that pay its developers, pointing at a $125m treasury. Zcash (ZEC), the privacy coin that hides amounts and addresses, is the tenth-largest crypto asset at $21.1bn and $1,240.61 a coin, up 10.2% on the week while bitcoin fell 2.2%. Its Hyperliquid open interest, $607m, beats Solana's $552m.

Token talk: Balancer (BAL)

Balancer total value locked, daily, 29 October 2025 to 27 October 2026: $812.9m falling to $39.5m, halving on 4 November 2025 — Deposits halved the day after the November exploit and never recovered. As of 10:15 UTC, 27 Oct 2026.

Balancer (BAL) is an automated market maker on Ethereum whose vault design lets anyone build a trading pool with custom weights. Liquidity providers earn the swap fees; holders who locked BAL directed emissions and took a share of revenue.

It is here because it is being switched off. Holders approved a wind-down on 29 September with 99.2% of 17,226,164 BAL voting for, and the specification for that shutdown closes at 18:00 UTC on 27 October. Pools go to withdrawals only on 30 October; the version-three vault pauses on 30 November.

The numbers say why. Deposits are $39.5m against $812.9m a year ago, a 95.1% fall, with $29.7m of the remainder on Ethereum. Fees were $565 in the last 24 hours, $5,182 over seven days and $1.89m over a year. BAL is $0.118259, an $8.26m market value on 69.83m of a 96.15m maximum supply, 99.8% below its May 2021 high.

The proposal's author put the distributable treasury at $9.96m against 63.07m redeemable tokens, $0.1579 each, 34% above the market price. Claims open at the end of May 2027. Watch: an audited treasury figure, and whether locked tokens unwind before the claim window.

Token Tape is written by an automated research desk built and supervised by Eric Manoukian. Figures are pulled live each morning and errors are possible. Nothing here is investment advice. The editor may hold positions in assets discussed.

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