Bitcoin in October 2025: narrative shift, leverage, and margin – what really happened

Plans for October 2025 were ambitious. History suggests that “Uptober” should be a growth month for cryptocurrencies. The reality turned out to be quite different. In the first week of the month, Bitcoin climbed to new highs – between October 5 and 7, it reached the range of $124,000–$126,000. Less than a week later, the market spiraled into panic, which in just two days generated declines on an unprecedented scale in many years.

The end of October brought shocking reality: approximately one-third of the total cryptocurrency market value evaporated, capitalization lost over $1 trillion, and leveraged positions proved to be amplifiers of the disaster.

How a few hours turned into a financial tragedy

The peak tension erupted during the weekend of October 10–12. The scenario was brutal and precise: Bitcoin plummeted below $105,000, Ethereum lost 11–12 percent of its value within a few hours, and many smaller coins experienced drops of 40–70 percent. Some trading pairs on less liquid markets recorded almost complete value loss.

This was not an ordinary market correction. It was a technical crash driven by automatic liquidation of leveraged positions. Between October 10 and 11, leveraged positions worth between $17 billion and $19 billion were closed within less than 24 hours, affecting about 1.6 million traders worldwide.

Today, Bitcoin hovers around $91,880 (data from January 12, 2026), representing a decline of about 25–27 percent from the October peak. The market is uncertain: is this the bottom, or are further declines awaiting before the end of the year?

Immediate trigger: politics and global tensions

The immediate cause was the announcement by the Trump administration of tariffs up to 100 percent on imports from China. This news hit an already weakened cryptocurrency market structure.

The price of Bitcoin, and thus the entire sector, shows very high sensitivity to risk sentiment in global markets. When risk aversion escalated, trading algorithms and traders with margin positions were forced to exit quickly. The problem is that with each margin call, the market lost liquidity, accelerating further declines.

Prices broke through support levels one after another. Automated systems accelerated sales. Exchanges faced a huge number of orders amid drastically falling liquidity. The result was an atmosphere similar to the “crypto winter” of 2022 – except this time, not just one large platform collapsed, but the entire web of leveraged exposures spread across the ecosystem.

Deep causes: leverage as a hidden condition of the crash

However, blaming tariffs alone would be an oversimplification of the tragedy. Tariffs were the spark; the market was already primed for explosion.

In the preceding months, we observed a split in narratives. On one side, Fed rate cuts suggested a return of liquidity. On the other, the Fed sent signals of caution: cash would not return without conditions and restrictions.

In this context, the widespread use of leverage—traders borrowing funds to trade multiples of their deposits—made the system extremely vulnerable to shocks. When prices started falling, forced liquidation of leveraged positions amplified the downward movement many times over, far beyond macroeconomic fundamentals.

There is also a psychological element. After months of hype about Bitcoin surpassing $150,000 and total crypto capitalization reaching $5–10 trillion, many traders believed the growth was unstoppable. When reality pointed in another direction, the discrepancy between “expectation” and “price” turned into panic—especially among those who entered leveraged positions during the final euphoric phase.

Three possible scenarios for the end of the year

Looking at the coming weeks, it’s better to think in terms of scenarios rather than precise forecasts.

Scenario one: The market gradually absorbs the shock. Early reports already suggest that long-term holders are starting to accumulate Bitcoin at lower prices, and institutions are rebalancing portfolios. In this case, Bitcoin slowly regains stability.

Scenario two: A prolonged phase of uncertainty. The market stops falling but also cannot rebound decisively. Intraday volatility increases, but a clear medium-term trend is absent. Short-term investors suffer from false signals.

Scenario three: A new wave of declines. Bitcoin tests the $70,000–$80,000 level, and most altcoins enter low-volume conditions with no positive catalysts.

What historical data says about the last quarter

Seasonal analysis of Bitcoin data from 2017 to 2024 shows an interesting trend: the fourth quarter of the year tends to lean toward gains. However, when examining individual years, we see significant volatility—some entire quarters are massive rallies, others are deep declines.

Lesson? Bitcoin’s history suggests that year-end usually brings growth, but the current macroeconomic climate is too unpredictable to rely solely on seasonality.

The role of institutional capital

Here’s what has changed since previous cycles: institutional capital is now much more structured. Funds that once treated cryptocurrencies purely as speculative assets now incorporate them into broad diversification and macro strategies.

Despite October’s crash, signals from major investment firms point more toward rebalancing than mass exit from this asset class. At the same time, regulators are working on new frameworks for spot ETFs, stablecoins, and leverage requirements. The question has shifted from “whether to regulate” to “how to regulate without destroying innovation.”

What awaits us until the end of 2025

October’s crash is not just another chapter in the long history of volatility. It’s a key test of the sector’s maturity.

It demonstrated how political shocks spread within minutes across the interconnected ecosystem, where leverage still plays a significant amplifying role. It also showed that the market can still operate under extreme pressure, and institutional players make the difference between total collapse and gradual rebalancing.

By the end of the year, the takeaway is simple: for investors, it’s less about guessing the exact price and more about understanding the nature of this phase. There is a real risk of new shocks driven by geopolitics and uncertainty. At the same time, the crash accelerated natural selection between solid projects and pure speculation, which the market had tolerated for too long.

Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies remain high-risk assets. Leverage demands the utmost caution, especially when macro conditions are complex. Those who stay engaged must do so with a clear investment horizon, strict risk management, and an awareness that October is not an anomaly – it’s a structural element of the crypto cycle.