Chart of bitcoin's price in October 2026. The line of daily closes falls from the $83,624 open to the $77,582 close, marked in orange, above the blue line of the short-term holder cost basis at $75,765. Below, bars of daily realized loss spike on October 22, 29 and 30.
Our own chart, built from Binance BTC/USDT daily candles and NodeWitness node data (realized loss and the November 1 snapshot).

Bitcoin Logs Its Worst October Since 2014, Leaving Nearly 38% of Supply Underwater

NodeWitness Team 6 min read

October unravelled for bitcoin in its final stretch. The month closed 7.2% below where it opened, the weakest October in our data, and our node shows the two days around the Binance hack were the only ones in the second half of the month when coins changed hands at an average loss.

Bitcoin's October candle closed at $77,582, 7.2% below its $83,624 open, according to the Binance daily data NodeWitness tracks [1]. That follows a 3.9% drop in October 2025, making it the second red October in a row and the weakest in our daily series, which starts in August 2017, ahead of 2025 and 2018 (−3.8%) [1].

Longer records tell a similar story. Bitcoin.com News, using CoinGlass data, puts the decline at 7.32% and calls it "its weakest performance for the month since 2014," adding that it is the first back-to-back losing October since 2011 and 2012 [4]. Each venue settles the month at a slightly different price, which explains the gap of a few tenths with our figure.

Until Wednesday, October 28, the month was a mild loss. Bitcoin closed that day at $81,344, just 2.7% below the open [1]. Then Binance lost about $6.3 billion, and, as CryptoWatchDesk's Joaquín Larrabure put it on the eve of the close, "two days did the work of four weeks" [5].

Two days that sank the month

The month peaked early, at $87,220 on October 2 [1]. The first blow came on October 22, a 3.2% daily drop alongside the largest on-chain profit-taking since February, as covered in our October 26 analysis [1][2]. Bitcoin touched $79,221 on October 24 and then held near $80,000 until the Fed kept rates on hold on October 28, which we looked at in our piece the following day [1][8].

October 29 brought everything at once. September PCE inflation matched forecasts, but results from Alphabet, Intel and Amazon weighed on the Nasdaq, according to CoinDesk's live coverage [6]. That evening Binance was hit by a theft the exchange puts at around $6.3 billion, as detailed in our report on the hack [7]. Bitcoin closed October 29 at $77,992, down 4.1% on the day, and set the monthly low of $76,326 on October 30 [1].

October Monthly change
2017 +47.6%
2018 −3.8%
2019 +10.3%
2020 +28.0%
2021 +39.9%
2022 +5.5%
2023 +28.5%
2024 +11.0%
2025 −3.9%
2026 −7.2%

Source: Binance BTC/USDT daily candles (UTC) in NodeWitness's price history [1]. Open of the 1st vs close of the month's last day.

October also ends a three-month winning run of July (+7.3%), August (+25%) and September (+6.4%), and leaves the lowest monthly close since July's $62,888 [1]. Bitcoin is down 11.5% from its 2026 open of $87,648 [1]. Nine Octobers, most of them in bull years, are too few to call a seasonal pattern.

What the chain recorded

Coins that moved on-chain in October realized $17.91 billion in profit and $9.35 billion in losses, according to our own node's daily recalculation [2]. September's totals were $18.15 billion and $8.56 billion [2]. Profit peaked on October 22 at $3.75 billion, the most since February [2].

Losses bunched up at the end. Realized loss reached $1.26 billion on October 29 and another $915 million on October 30 [2]. SOPR, which compares the selling price of spent coins with what they last cost, closed October 29 at 0.9877, its lowest since August 20 [2]. Only four October days ended below 1: the 12th, 14th, 29th and 30th [2].

$2.18 billion of realized losses in two days, October 29 and 30, almost a quarter of the month's total [2].

The month did not end in a rout, though. On Saturday, October 31, SOPR was back at 1.0026 and realized losses fell to $138 million [2].

Who sold and who bought

Supply changed hands as well. Long-term holder supply, coins unmoved for more than 155 days, went from 16.41 million BTC in the October 18 snapshot to 16.31 million on November 1, a drop of about 97,500 BTC [3]. Short-term holder supply rose by about 104,200 BTC to 3.80 million [3]. A net decline in long-term supply means more coins left that group than aged into it.

The short-term holder cost basis stood at $75,765 in the November 1 snapshot, against $75,820 on October 25 [3]. Even the monthly low stayed above that level, and the close was 2.4% higher [1][3]. The network-wide realized price, the average cost of every coin, is $52,576, for an MVRV of 1.48 at the closing price [3].

At the close, 37.9% of evaluable supply, about 7.58 million BTC, sits below its cost basis [3]. With the same distribution and the month's opening price, that share would be 27.5% [3]. In other words, about 2.08 million BTC last moved at prices between those two levels, a rough measure of how much supply slipped into loss as October unwound.

The weekly snapshot series has a gap between June 14 and October 18, so our node cannot compare holder balances with the start of the month [3].

What comes next

November opens with bitcoin above recent buyers' cost basis and below October's open. The next difficulty adjustment is due around November 12, with our node's latest reading pointing to a 1.2% decrease [3], and the Fed meets again on December 8 and 9 [8]. The open question is whether price holds above the $75,765 short-term holder cost basis.

Track the data on our short- and long-term holder realized price, SOPR and supply in loss by price charts. More on prices lives in our Market section.

Sources

Source type in brackets. Accessed November 2, 2026.

  1. NodeWitness, Binance BTC/USDT daily candles (UTC) via /api/market/ohlc, since August 17, 2017. October 1, 2026 open ($83,623.6), October 2 high ($87,220), October 30 low ($76,326), October 31 close ($77,582); monthly changes calculated by NodeWitness. Cross-checked against Binance's public October monthly candle. (Primary, own data with third-party price)
  2. NodeWitness, daily on-chain series (/api/node/onchain-daily) recalculated from our node's blocks through block 974,041 (October 31, 2026). Realized profit and loss, SOPR. (Primary, own data)
  3. NodeWitness, realized price, MVRV, cohort supply and supply in loss from UTXO-set snapshots at blocks 971,930 (October 18), 973,007 (October 25) and 974,069 (November 1, 2026), 155-day threshold (/api/market/realized-cohorts/history, /api/market/realized-cap, /api/market/supply-loss), and the difficulty adjustment estimate (/api/node/difficulty-adjustment, block 974,242). (Primary, own data)
  4. Jamie Redman, Bitcoin's 'Uptober' Goes Bust With Worst October Finish Since 2014, Bitcoin.com News, November 1, 2026. (Secondary, press)
  5. Joaquín Larrabure, Market Read: Bitcoin set for worst October since 2014, CryptoWatchDesk, October 30, 2026. (Secondary, press)
  6. CoinDesk, Live updates: Binance confirms security breach, cryptos fall, live coverage, October 29, 2026. (Secondary, press)
  7. NodeWitness, Binance Confirms a $6.3 Billion Hack, With $3 Billion Frozen and 18,270 BTC Out of Reach, October 29, 2026, and the sources cited there. (Primary, own data and cited press)
  8. NodeWitness, The Fed Holds, and Bitcoin's Chain Stays in Profit, October 29, 2026, and the sources cited there. (Primary, own data and cited press)

More in Price and market

See all 23 articles in Price and market →

Last updated: November 2, 2026