Bitcoin shed another 3% of its value this afternoon after its price dipped to $100,175. That’s lowest level since May.

Since 2018 the cryptocurrency hasn’t seen this type of price action, prompting analysts to say that “Red October” continues to haunt the market.

Ethereum, meanwhile, has lost 20% of its value in the past month. Trading at about $3,300, according to CoinGecko, Ether has erased all of its gains for the year.

For macro analyst, Alex Krüger, there’s five reasons behind the ongoing dump.

“Equities, traders, digital asset treasuries, Federal Open Market Committee, and the October 10 crash,” Krüger told DL News.

“Time,” he added. “Needs time.”

Indeed, it’s not a good time to be a risk asset. Investors continue to wonder when the US government shutdown will end, the US and China trade war has simmered but isn’t over yet, and there are still concerns whether the Federal Reserve meeting in December will bring additional interest rate cuts.

All of this has brought an onslaught of sell pressure in the crypto market and beyond. Wall Street executives have alerted equity investors that stocks could suffer a pullback in the next year.

Moreover, the October 10 collapse, which liquidated around $20 billion in leveraged positions, continues to jitter trades and investors alike.

For Jasper De Maere, desk strategist at Wintermute, the October 10 crash has brought an onslaught of “new narratives [perps, x420, robotics] to create excitement which all died down within a week or two,” he said in comments shared with DL News.

“Many of these have sucked the liquidity out of the room.”

Who is selling?

The first sellers appear to be Bitcoin ETF investors.

Just yesterday this seemingly staunch cohort of buyers offloaded nearly $200 million in assets, following last week’s about $800 million in sales, according to data from DefiLlama.

Then, there are Bitcoin OGs. Onchain data platform Lookonchain noted yesterday that long-term holders have been selling in droves. Over $1.5 billion from legacy wallets have been sent to Coinbase, Binance, and Kraken.

Finally, Bitcoin treasuries. Although these haven’t been selling, they haven’t been buying — which means there’s not much to stem the drain. Firms holding Bitcoin on their balance sheet recorded the lowest level of purchases in all of 2025 during October, according to BitcoinTreasuries.

Now, all eyes are the Federal Reserve’s December meeting.

But with the ongoing shutdown, the Fed has insufficient information to make a call on whether to continue cutting interest rates, keep them as is, or raise them.

Predictions go awry

Most analysts were bullish as the cycle entered the last quarter of the year.

Bernstein and UK-based Standard Chartered were predicting $200,000 per Bitcoin by the end of 2025. VanEck had called for $180,000 while Arthur Hayes had forecasted $250,000. Others, like Barclays, who called for $116,000, are still above the current price tag.

Of 17 big-name companies that had predicted Bitcoin’s price for the end of the year, the average across the list comes out to roughly $182,000 per coin, renowned crypto trader Scott Melker wrote in his latest newsletter.

At the current price of $101,000, Bitcoin would need to rise about 7.5% per week to reach those predictions.

To be sure, some are still bullish.

“Given that the four-year-cycle anniversary of the 2021 Bitcoin all-time is nigh,” Arthur Hayes wrote in a November 3 essay, “many will mistake this period of market weakness and ennui as the top and dump their stack. That is a mistake.”

How? The US central bank will creep into quantitative easing, a liquidity reboot camouflaged as policy discretion, Hayes said.

Pedro Solimano is DL News’ Buenos Aires-based markets correspondent. Got a tip? Email him at psolimano@dlnews.com.