Bitcoin Reclaims $82,000 as $11 Billion Options Expiry Clears and Cooler Jobs Data Softens Fed Path

Bitcoin rose through $82,000 on Friday, reclaiming the 50-day moving average near $81,800 that had capped the tape since last week's slide to $79,250. The move came as roughly $11 billion of monthly options expired and the October employment report softened expectations for a December Federal Reserve hike.

The expiry cleared a heavy overhang. Derivatives data showed a put-heavy positioning skew into the event, and the absence of a post-expiry squeeze let spot lead rather than follow. Funding rates reset toward neutral at about 0.01% per eight hours after drifting negative midweek, and open interest rebuilt gradually rather than in a single leveraged push.

Macro did the rest. Cooler wage growth pulled front-end Treasury yields lower and eased the dollar, a combination that has tracked crypto beta more reliably than any regulatory headline this quarter. Bitcoin's rolling 21-day correlation with the Nasdaq-100 sits near 0.67, and Friday's rebound in rate-sensitive technology carried digital assets with it.

"The expiry mattered less than the calendar clearing," said Ricardo Alvarez, head of digital assets at Halcyon Trading. "You had the FOMC, PCE, options expiry and payrolls stacked into four sessions. What is left is a cleaner macro path into the December meeting — and that is what risk assets, including crypto, are trading."

Flows remain the swing factor. U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs posted a $635.6 million single-day outflow on October 22 but still finished that week with about $301 million of net creations, and October's cumulative tally is only modestly negative. Ethereum outperformed on the session, trading above $4,400, while the broader CoinDesk 20 Index added 3%.

Technical levels now flip from resistance to support. Above $82,000, the next reference points are the October swing high near $86,000 and the mid-$90,000 zone that capped last week's failed breakout. Below, $79,200-$77,600 remains the demand shelf that held on Monday.