A year after its peak, bitcoin holds up as yields climb

Every week, Amdax summarizes what’s happening in the crypto market for you. Want to dive deeper? Click on the links (if available) in this article for more insights.

Market update

Stay informed in three steps:

1. Bitcoin stalls at 87,000 dollars as stocks hit records
On Monday, bitcoin hit a wall at 87,000 dollars for the third time since September 23 and slipped back to around 85,600 dollars. Stocks had no such trouble. The Nasdaq 100 closed at a record high, and the S&P 500 finished within half a percent of its peak. The US ten-year yield stands at 5.32 percent, around levels last seen in 2002, and the dollar index climbed to 102.53, its highest since April 2025. Friday’s weak jobs report, with just 29,000 jobs added in September, cooled expectations of another rate hike in late October. The bond market barely noticed, because investors want more in return for lending to the US government for longer, whatever the Fed does next. The broader altcoin space moved with bitcoin, with ether near 2,700 dollars.

2. US drops reporting rule for self-custody wallets
FinCEN, the anti-money laundering arm of the US Treasury, withdrew two proposals on Monday that had hung over the market for years. The first dates from December 2020. It would have required banks and crypto businesses to report transfers above 10,000 dollars to or from a wallet the customer controls, and to record the counterparty’s name and address for transfers above 3,000 dollars. The second, from 2023, would have labeled transactions through mixers, services that obscure where crypto comes from, as a primary money laundering concern. FinCEN framed the move as part of rules that fit digital assets, while saying it will keep watching mixers. Europe has gone the other way. Since the end of 2024, a crypto service provider handling a transfer above 1,000 euros to or from a self-custody wallet has to check that the wallet really belongs to the customer.

3. A year after the peak, bitcoin is down 32 percent
A year after its October 6, 2025 record above 126,000 dollars, bitcoin trades around 85,600 dollars, 32 percent lower. After earlier peaks, the one-year loss was much deeper: 69.7 percent after 2013, 82.3 percent after 2017 and 74.6 percent after 2021. The low point was milder too. On June 30, bitcoin dipped just under 59,000 dollars, more than 53 percent below the peak, where past declines reached 77 to 85 percent. The main explanation is who is buying. Earlier rallies were carried by retail traders using borrowed money, and when those positions collapsed, they dragged the market down with them. Today, asset managers and companies hold a larger share, and they are slower to sell. You can see it in volatility as well: around 40 percent annualized, against a long-run average above 80 percent.

Ries’ take

US Treasuries have lost value this year. That is the flip side of rising market rates: when yields go up, the price of existing bonds goes down. The good news this week is the weaker jobs report, which took some of the edge off expectations of further rate hikes. At the same time, several markets are signaling strain in the US economy, with credit and rates leading the way. Stocks and crypto seem largely unbothered for now. The Nasdaq is setting records and bitcoin trades well above its June low. So two sides of the market are telling different stories. What I will be watching over the coming weeks is whether those signals move toward each other, either through a slowdown on stocks or through falling rates.