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News · Oct 13, 2026 · 3 min read

Bitcoin today: under $82,000 as $770 million of longs go, and Strategy adds 250 more

Bitcoin dropped below $82,000 on Monday evening as long positions were force-closed, a week after the ETFs' worst outflows since June, with a Korean stock rout adding to the pressure. Strategy still bought, and difficulty is on course to rise again. What it means for anyone running machines.

Firsthand card: "Bitcoin today: under $82,000 as $770 million of longs go, and Strategy adds 250 more"

Bitcoin fell under $82,000 as longs were force-closed

Bitcoin slid to $81,382 on Monday evening, New York time, down 2.8% on the day from about $84,200 earlier, according to The Block. CoinGlass counted $771 million of crypto liquidations over 24 hours, $685.6 million of them longs. The Block adds that public liquidation data can understate the true total.

The causes were several. Dominick John of Zeus Research pointed to elevated Treasury yields, a stronger dollar and risk-off positioning ahead of key US inflation data. South Korea's Kospi fell 6.1% on Tuesday morning in Asia, which Presto Research's Min Jung linked to weakness in US chip and memory stocks. US spot bitcoin ETFs lost $681.1 million last week, their worst week since late June, on SoSoValue figures cited by The Block.

In our own series, which counts bitcoin futures only, longs lost $95 million on 12 October against $15 million for shorts. Bitcoin's daily reading for 12 October is $83,677; the 13 October reading, as we write, is $81,752. The liquidations chart shows how this compares with the squeezes of the summer.

Chart: Bitcoin futures positions force-closed each day, shorts above the line and longs below. The long bar of 12 October is the largest since 8 October. Open the chart

Strategy bought 250 bitcoin at an average of $86,194

Strategy said on Monday that it bought 250 BTC for about $21.5 million between 5 and 11 October, taking its holdings to 848,250 BTC, The Block reported. It paid for nearly all of it by selling 125,183 shares in an at-the-market programme, for about $21 million, with cash covering the rest.

For scale, the network pays out 3.125 bitcoin per block. At the 152 blocks mined on 12 October, that is about 475 new coins in one day, so a whole week of Strategy's buying equals roughly half a day of new supply.

A wallet asleep since 2020 moved 4,582 bitcoin

Lookonchain, citing Arkham data, reported that a wallet dormant for more than six years sent about 4,582 BTC, worth about $377.6 million, to five addresses on Monday. It had received the coins in March 2020, when they were worth about $40.8 million. The Block notes that the coins have stayed in the new addresses, so the transfer alone does not show a sale.

A different wallet moved 4,500 BTC last week after more than four years of inactivity. Both are movements to watch rather than conclusions to draw.

Moscow Exchange says crypto trading opens on 1 December

Boris Blokhin, who runs the Moscow Exchange's securities market, said on 8 October: "On December 1, we plan to provide such an opportunity to trade cryptocurrencies under the new legislation." Bitcoin.com reported on 11 October that the exchange is already running a pilot with professional participants and needs no further licences.

Investors who are not qualified will be capped on how much they can put in and limited to three assets: bitcoin, ether and Tether's USDT. Qualified investors face no such limits.

What it means for miners

A petahash earned $39.87 a day on 12 October on our hashprice chart, and about $38.95 at the 13 October reading, which is an estimate. In bitcoin it earned 0.000477 a day on 12 October and 0.000476 a week earlier: the fall in the dollar figure came from the price, not from the coins.

Difficulty is the number to watch. Our estimate for the next retarget, 506 blocks away and about three days off, is a rise of 4.9%, after the 3 October adjustment moved it by just 0.03%. More hashrate sharing the same rewards means fewer coins per machine, which is why efficiency decides who keeps stacking.

Cost does not move with the headline. The most efficient machine we stock, the Antminer S23 XP Hyd at 8.9 J/TH, makes a coin for about $18,000 of electricity at Nigeria's 3.9¢, against a market price near $82,000. That is electricity only, at today's hashprice, and output is not guaranteed.

The dollar figure moves with the price. The coins per petahash barely moved.

Sources and further reading

Disclosure

Firsthand Bitcoin sells and hosts mining hardware, including this machine. No manufacturer, distributor or affiliate programme paid for or reviewed this page and we take no commission on the links above. Historical figures are computed from daily bitcoin price and network hashprice, each day valued at its own prices. Nothing here is investment advice.