Bitcoin sinks below $82,000 and $771 million in crypto bets are wiped out as Seoul's chip stocks crack

Bitcoin slid on Monday evening and took leveraged traders with it. The price stood at $81,382 at 9:20pm Eastern, down 2.8% in 24 hours after trading near $84,200 earlier in the day, The Block reported. Ether fell 4.6% to $2,425, XRP 6.4% and solana 7.5%. Zcash, down 10.4%, was the weakest of the ten largest coins.

About $771 million in leveraged positions were closed out by exchanges over 24 hours, CoinGlass data showed, and about $685.6 million of that, close to 89%, was bets on higher prices. Most of it came in the last 12 hours.

The slide lined up with a rout in Seoul. The Kospi was down 6.08% at 5,996 at 10:40am local time on Tuesday, Seoul Economic Daily reported, after a drop of more than 5% in index futures triggered a temporary halt on program sell orders, the first in about two months. Samsung Electronics was down 6.79% and SK hynix 8.54% on worries about new memory chip supply from China's CXMT. Bitmine chairman Tom Lee wrote on X that the steep drop in Korean stocks could be spilling over into crypto, The Block reported.

An analyst quoted by The Block also pointed to elevated Treasury yields, a stronger dollar and outflows from US spot bitcoin ETFs, which lost a net $681.1 million last week, according to SoSoValue data. The next test is the US consumer price report for September, due Wednesday, October 14, at 8:30am Eastern.