Bitcoin Holds Near $86K Ahead of $1.1B in Token Unlocks and Fed Minutes

Bitcoin started the new week on firmer footing, trading around $86,000 on Monday, October 5, after briefly touching roughly $87,000 before pulling back. The move leaves BTC up close to 3% over the past seven days, but the coming days carry a packed calendar: more than $1.1 billion in scheduled token unlocks and the release of minutes from the Federal Reserve’s September rate-hike meeting.

Where Bitcoin Stands

Market data cited by CoinDesk and Coinspeaker put Bitcoin between roughly $86,000 and $86,400 during Monday’s session, a gain of a little over 1% on the day. Bitcoin’s market capitalization sits near $1.72 trillion, and daily trading volume jumped sharply compared with the weekend’s thin trading.

That is a modest extension of the recovery we noted last week, when Bitcoin first pushed back above $86K. Before that, BTC had spent much of late September pinned near $83,000 while bond yields climbed, as we covered in our look at the 10-year Treasury’s surge.

On-chain analytics firm Glassnode’s liquidation data, as reported by Coinspeaker, shows a large cluster of leveraged positions around $90,000, with secondary clusters near $83,000 and $75,000. Clusters like these tend to be watched closely because forced liquidations can accelerate a move in either direction once price reaches them. Recent trading has consolidated in a band of roughly $86,500 to $87,500, with $83,000 acting as nearby support.

ETF Demand Cools but Stays Positive

U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs logged a third consecutive week of net inflows in the week ending October 2, according to several flow trackers, though the total was a small fraction of the roughly $2.39 billion that came in the week before. Reports also pointed to a split between products, with Ether ETFs seeing outflows while Bitcoin funds took in money.

The bigger picture is mixed. According to a 24/7 Wall St. analysis, spot Bitcoin ETFs pulled in about $6.3 billion during the third quarter, yet are up only around $1 billion for 2026 overall, a reminder of how much money left these products in the first half of the year.

$1.1 Billion in Token Unlocks This Week

According to a tally published by The Cryptonomist, roughly $1.11 billion worth of tokens are scheduled to unlock between October 5 and October 11. The three largest:

• Ethena (ENA), October 5: about 171.88 million ENA, valued near $41.5 million, split between core contributors (93.75 million) and investors (78.13 million). That’s roughly 1.88% of ENA’s released supply.
• Hyperliquid (HYPE), October 6: 3.75 million HYPE, valued at about $340 million, the biggest single unlock of the week. Notably, the report says the entire batch is going to one institutional buyer rather than being distributed to insiders.
• Aptos (APT), October 11: about 11.31 million APT, worth roughly $9 million, spread across core contributors, the community, investors and the Aptos Foundation. It represents about 0.64% of released supply.

Aerodrome Finance (AERO), Movement (MOVE) and Babylon (BABY) also have supply releases scheduled during the same window.

Unlocks don’t automatically mean selling pressure. Who receives the tokens, and whether they have reason to sell, matters more than the headline dollar figure. A batch committed to a single institutional buyer, as reported for HYPE, is a different situation from a large tranche landing in early-investor wallets. Still, traders often treat big unlock dates as periods of elevated volatility for the tokens involved.

The Fed Minutes on Wednesday

The macro event of the week arrives on Wednesday, October 7, at 2:00 p.m. ET, when the Federal Reserve publishes minutes from its September 15-16 meeting. That meeting produced the Fed’s first rate increase in about three years, approved unanimously. Markets will be reading the minutes for clues about how many officials see further tightening as necessary ahead of the next FOMC meeting on October 27-28.

Higher rates and rising Treasury yields have been a headwind for risk assets, including crypto, through much of September. Any signal in the minutes about the pace or extent of future hikes could influence how traders position going into the end of the month.

What to Watch

• Whether Bitcoin can hold above the $86,000 area, and how price reacts if it approaches the $90,000 liquidation cluster.
• Price action in ENA, HYPE and APT around their unlock dates.
• The tone of the Fed minutes on Wednesday afternoon.
• Whether ETF inflows pick back up or continue to slow.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice.