Bitcoin fell about 0.9% to roughly $83,600 on Friday, giving back part of this week's rally after touching an intraday high near $87,000—territory the asset hadn't visited in months.

The roughly 1% pullback from the prior close came after Bitcoin broke out of the $75,000 to $81,000 range that had capped it for weeks. Technical indicators still read bullish, however, though the Federal Reserve's next move could reshape the outlook. Meanwhile, XRP (+15.45% over seven days) and Solana (+9.33% over seven days) are outperforming the broader crypto market.

The pause isn't spooking chart-watching traders. Bitcoin's daily setup remains bullish, with the 50-day moving average sitting above the 200-day in a pattern known as a golden cross—one that technical traders typically read as confirmation of a longer-term uptrend.

Some of Friday's softness has a mechanical explanation. Some $15.6 billion in Bitcoin options expired on Deribit, the largest crypto options exchange by open interest, and dealers often unwind hedges once that flow clears—a routine event that can jolt prices without breaking the underlying trend, since hedging positions built up over weeks come off the books all at once. That helps explain why open interest and 24-hour trading volume both fell sharply, down 14.39% and 13.68%, respectively.

Liquidations were fairly balanced as well: $161.96 million in long positions against $156.1 million in shorts over the last 24 hours, a pattern that looks more like leverage getting reset than a one-sided flush.

Macro tailwinds are still doing part of the work. The Federal Reserve raised rates 25 basis points to a range of 3.75% to 4% on September 16, its first hike since 2023, but kept buying short-term Treasury bills to keep bank reserves flush—a combination that blunted the hawkish optics and kept risk assets bid.

That relief didn't last. Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh's post-meeting dot plot projected a median rate of just 4.1% through the end of 2027, signaling only one more hike was likely. Fed Governor Michael Barr said on September 23 that "further policy adjustments are likely needed," a comment that landed alongside a report showing core PCE inflation at 3.4%, near a four-year high.

Odds of an October hike have since climbed to roughly 75% on the CME's FedWatch tool and 68.5% on Myriad Markets, a sharp reversal from where they sat right after the September meeting. Rate expectations carry extra weight for crypto because the asset class produces no cash flow of its own—higher yields on cash and short-term Treasuries raise the opportunity cost of holding it.

Spot Bitcoin ETFs, meanwhile, pulled in another $299.09 million on Friday, a smaller number than the single-day hauls recorded earlier in the week—a sign the initial burst of buying is cooling rather than accelerating. Because spot ETFs acquire the underlying Bitcoin directly when new shares are created, daily flow figures are widely tracked as a proxy for institutional demand.

Total crypto market cap sits at $2.87 trillion, down from the $3 trillion-plus level reached earlier this week. The Fear and Greed Index—a composite gauge built from market volatility, momentum, and sentiment data—has eased to 72 from a peak of 79, still solidly in "greed" territory, just less euphoric.

Most of the top 10 cryptocurrencies are following Bitcoin lower over the past 24 hours. Ethereum is roughly flat, BNB is down 0.81%, and Tron and Hyperliquid are both in the red. XRP and Solana are the exceptions.

XRP is up 4.37% over the past day and 15.45% over the week, trading near $1.58 at a $99 billion market cap. XRP ETFs notched a nine-day inflow streak worth $1.6 billion in late August, and inflows have continued since as institutional interest in the token builds.

Solana is up 3.36% on the day and 9.33% over seven days, changing hands at around $119.84, with a market cap of $70 billion. The network's Alpenglow upgrade, which cuts transaction finality—the point at which a transaction becomes irreversible—to roughly 150 milliseconds, already cleared a validator governance vote with overwhelming support, though its mainnet activation date remains tentative. Spot Solana ETFs from Fidelity, Grayscale, and VanEck—which launched in November 2025—continue to see inflows as the upgrade narrative builds.

The next test for Bitcoin arrives fast. September's Personal Consumption Expenditures inflation data—the Fed's preferred inflation gauge—lands September 30, followed by the September jobs report on October 2, both capable of resetting rate expectations heading into the fourth quarter, with the Fed's next decision itself due in October.