After a week of indecisiveness, Bitcoin has slipped back under the six-figure line. Spot BTC is trading just over $97,000 today after briefly touching the mid $96,000s, more than 20% below its early October peak around $126,000 and the lowest levels since May.
Behind the move is a sharp swing back to risk-off sentiment. Traders are reassessing the odds of a near-term Federal Reserve rate cut, with odds for a December move sliding as policymakers sound more cautious. That shift, combined with liquidity drained by the recent US government shutdown, has hit crypto especially hard.
Outflows from spot Bitcoin funds and derivatives positioning are amplifying the drop. Around $870 million has been pulled from Bitcoin investment products, almost $5 billion in BTC and ETH options are expiring today, and more than $1 billion in leveraged positions were liquidated as the price knifed through $100,000.
Yet capital is not leaving the ecosystem altogether - instead, it’s rotating. Big money is leaning into high beta plays on the next stage of Bitcoin’s evolution, especially Layer-2 presales. The Bitcoin Hyper (HYPER) token sale has already attracted roughly $27.5 million, and on-chain data shows a single buyer committing about $500,000 in one transaction yesterday.
That kind of conviction is why many traders now see Bitcoin Hyper as one of the clearest ways to bet on a rebound once the macro dust settles.
Bitcoin’s Drop Below $100K Fuels Volatility and Value Debates
Bitcoin’s latest leg lower did not happen in a vacuum. Weakness has clustered around US trading hours, where macro sentiment is being reset almost daily. Analysts point to fading expectations of rapid Fed cuts, heavy selling in growth stocks, and thin liquidity after the shutdown as key drivers of the slide under $100,000.
Options and derivatives are adding pressure. Today, $5 billion BTC and ETH options will expire on Deribit, which has kept hedging demand elevated, while forced liquidations have washed out over $1 billion of leveraged longs as spot revisited the $96,000 to $98,000 zone.
That backdrop makes Vivek Sen’s recent X post feel especially sharp: despite macro factors, countries, institutions, and banks show undiminished interest in Bitcoin.
According to Reuters, a European central bank has just disclosed a test portfolio that includes Bitcoin and tokenized assets, and research shows public companies still accumulating BTC on their balance sheets.
Structural demand is rising, even as prices wobble in the short term. Longer-term, steady buying by institutions, corporates, and even central banks indicates the current drawdown may be undervaluing future demand when taking a multi-year view.
If that thesis holds, infrastructure that makes Bitcoin more usable, such as Layer-2 networks like Bitcoin Hyper, becomes the natural leverage play on the next upcycle.
Bitcoin Hyper: High Speed Layer 2 Turning BTC Into a Full DeFi Stack
Bitcoin Hyper (HYPER) is built around a simple idea: Bitcoin should not just sit in cold storage, it should move fast enough and cheaply enough to power an entire on-chain economy. The project does this by creating a dedicated Layer-2 network that anchors to Bitcoin for security while using the Solana Virtual Machine (SVM) to reach much higher throughput.
BTC is bridged into the system via a canonical bridge. Base layer Bitcoin is locked, then re-minted as a wrapped asset on Bitcoin Hyper, where it can zip across the network with near-instant finality and low fees. Zero-knowledge proofs and periodic settlement back to the main chain are designed to keep the Layer 2 in sync with Bitcoin’s security guarantees.
On top of that infrastructure, Bitcoin Hyper wants builders. Cilinix Crypto’s review on YouTube highlights recent development updates on RPC endpoints, node software, observability, and developer tooling, so the network does not launch into an empty field but into a ready-made ecosystem.
Commenting on Bitcoin Hyper’s future potential, Cilinix Crypto stresses audited code, a clear roadmap to mainnet, and a token that ties usage, staking, and governance together. He argues that locking in HYPER before the bridge and Layer-2 stack go live offers asymmetric upside if Bitcoin activity migrates to this faster environment.
That view makes Bitcoin Hyper a rare play that both tracks Bitcoin’s long-term adoption and adds its own growth drivers via DeFi, payments, and even meme coin ecosystems.
Whale Buy Supercharges HYPER Presale With $500,000 Investment
While Bitcoin spot charts flash red, the Bitcoin Hyper presale metrics look very different. Over $27.5 million has been committed so far, and the team lists the token at $0.013275 per HYPER.
On-chain, the standout figure is yesterday’s whale buy. Etherscan shows one address sending roughly 155.6 ETH, worth about $499,000 at the time, into the Bitcoin Hyper presale contract and receiving 36.86 million HYPER in return. It’s one of several six-figure allocations that analysts have flagged in recent weeks as evidence of growing institutional-level interest.
The buyer is clearly betting that a scarce Layer-2 focused on Bitcoin, audited by third-party security firms and already on the radar of multiple research desks, will rebound harder than BTC itself once macro sellers exhaust. With Bitcoin below $100,000 and long-term demand quietly rising, that’s a thesis many in the market are starting to share.