From CoinDesk · By Oliver Knight, Omkar Godbole
Bitcoin dipped to about $82,300 before recovering to around $82,800, roughly 4% below Tuesday's high near $86,600.
Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake urged the industry to prepare for "bunker mode" in case AI-driven math breaks wallet cryptography, while Vitalik Buterin said the risk is real, but holders shouldn't scramble.
The 30-year Treasury yield rose to 5.71% ahead of a $22 billion auction, after Fed minutes showed most officials expect another interest-rate increase by year-end.
Bitcoin BTC$82,711.65 extended its slide during Asian hours, dipping to about $82,300 before recovering to around $82,800, roughly 4% below Tuesday's high near $86,600. The CoinDesk 100 has lost close to 2% over 24 hours.
Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake used a post on X, viewed almost 4 million times, to urge the industry to begin planning for what he called "bunker mode."
The idea is a gradual migration of funds to new addresses whose public keys have never been exposed. Drake argued that AI-driven advances in mathematics make it reasonable to brace for a break of the elliptic-curve signatures securing bitcoin and ether wallets in "months not years." He pointed to a batch of 722 mathematical results released by OpenAI this week as evidence.
Not everyone agreed on the urgency. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said the risk from AI-accelerated math should be taken seriously, but advised holders against scrambling to move funds. Samson Mow, CEO of bitcoin technology firm Jan3, told followers there was no need to panic "because an Ethereum researcher is saying silly things."
The pressure from bond markets has also not let up, with the 30-year Treasury yield climbing 4 basis points to 5.71% and the 10-year to 5.32%, according to CNBC, ahead of a $22 billion 30-year bond auction later Thursday.
Minutes of the Fed's September meeting, released Wednesday, showed all 19 officials backed last month's interest-rate increase, with most seeing another as likely appropriate by year-end. September's consumer price index on Oct. 14 is the last inflation reading before the Fed's Oct. 28 decision.
Derivatives positioning
Sellers keep their edge as liquidations ease: The 24-hour taker long/short ratio is 48% to 52%, little changed from yesterday's 52%-plus share for shorts. Crypto futures open interest (OI) is down 1% at $150 billion, and trading volume is largely unchanged at $187 billion. Liquidations fell to $400 million from $548 million yesterday. Sellers are still in control, but with less forced selling.
Majors see deleveraging, not fresh shorts: Notional OI, or the dollar value of active futures bets, has fallen in BTC, ETH, HYPE, XRP and DOGE by as much as or more than their spot prices. That means traders aren't adding new bets on the way down, and in some cases are closing them. The selloff looks like de-risking rather than a build-up of new bearish positions.