Bitcoin falls 3.2% to about $81,300 on Thursday as stocks sell off

Bitcoin fell 3.2% on Thursday, to $81,307.16 from $84,024.67, according to daily price data from the Coinbase exchange. Ether fell 3.5%, to $2,385.86 from $2,471.83 (computed), on the same data.

What happened

The figures are for the daily candle from 00:00 to 23:59 UTC on October 22. Bitcoin's price ranged from $80,789.61 to $84,305.25 during the day. On Wednesday it had closed at $84,024.67, its highest daily close in the October 14-22 period (computed), after trading as high as $84,856.07.

Ether traded between $2,357.05 and $2,480.38 on Thursday.

Yahoo Finance reported that crypto prices fell as part of a broader decline in riskier assets, and that bitcoin was trading around $81,600 in early Thursday trading, according to its market coverage. The Nasdaq Composite fell 2.6% and the S&P 500 fell 1.2% on Thursday.

The background

Bitcoin has traded in a narrow range in recent days. From October 14 through October 22, its daily closes ran between $81,307.16 and $84,024.67, and its intraday low was $79,676.02, reached on October 15 (computed from the Coinbase data).

US spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds recorded net inflows of $526.6 million on Monday, October 19, according to SoSoValue data reported by CoinDesk. CoinDesk said the total was the largest daily net inflow in nearly a month and was driven entirely by BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT), which took in $665.2 million. Fidelity's FBTC lost $83.6 million and Grayscale's GBTC lost $54.9 million.

Funds that hold ether had outflows of $103.3 million on Monday, including $95.4 million from BlackRock's ETHA, the fourth consecutive session of outflows, CoinDesk reported. It said October flows for spot bitcoin ETFs were still about $90.5 million negative after Monday.

What to watch

The Federal Reserve's policy committee meets on October 27-28, according to its calendar. The Bureau of Labor Statistics is due to publish October employment data on November 6 and consumer prices on November 10, both at 8:30 a.m. ET, according to its employment and CPI schedules.

Flows into the ETFs for the days after Monday were not available in the sources used for this report. Crypto prices trade around the clock and can move sharply on a single day, as they did on Thursday.