Market Open — Fri, Oct 9, 2026 SpaceX goes telco · Shorts getting squeezed · 10/10 eve

📉The tape

83,012 on BTC. Alarmingly fine. The 80.3k tag was Thursday's low, the overnight bid came the second Trump said no Iran strikes before the midterms, and it never looked back. ETH and SOL did not get the memo: both still red on the day, ETH funding is actually negative on Binance. Zcash green again.

Liquidations (Coinglass, 24h): $1.06B across 173,906 traders, 81% longs. ETH took the most pain ($260M of longs, more than BTC). Biggest single: a $20M ETH long on Hyperliquid. But the last 12 hours flipped: $104M liquidated and 81% of it shorts. Last 4h: $59M, 77% shorts. This bounce is a squeeze, and squeezes run until the shorts are gone.

Mood: OI down 3–4% on the majors, funding flat to negative, taker ratio 0.50. Nobody is positioned. Dead-neutral tape into the anniversary.

🏦Macro

10Y at 5.27%, a hair under the 24-year high set earlier this week, and the market just does not care today. VIX 15.1. Brent off 1–2% but still ~$101–103 after Trump's "no Iran attack before the midterms" line; WTI $90.35. Gold $4,178 (+1.2%) and silver $60.50 (+2.5%) bid again, which is what you buy when yields are at 5.3% and the Fed has one more hike pencilled in. UMich at 10:00 ET: consensus 48, 1-year inflation expectations were 4.6% last month. If that prints 5, rates sell off and the OpenAI scare looks cute. CPI is Wednesday. That is the whole macro story; move on.

📈Stocks

S&P 7,790 (+0.2%) · NDX 30,954 (−0.1%) on the perps; futures S&P +0.4%, Nasdaq +0.8%, Dow +0.2% premarket. Thursday's AI dump reversing. Nikkei proxy 69,035 flat; Korea line (EWY) 178.3 (−0.9%), still digesting the memory selloff. S&P tracking green on the week after Tuesday's record.

NVDA 234 (−0.6%) · MU 1,056 (−1.7%) · SNDK 1,634 (−2.4%) · SK Hynix 1,238 (−1.4%) · AMD 631 (−1.0%) · AVGO 367 (−1.7%) · INTC 109 (−1.9%) · ORCL 137 (−3.7%) · CRWV 84 (−3.8%) · NBIS 226 (−3.2%) · SOXL 149 (−0.9%). Memory and the OpenAI-exposed names are still red on the 24h because the perps caught Thursday's cash session; premarket is green. TSLA 381 (+1.7%) · DELL 580 (+1.5%) · META 726 (+0.4%) · MSFT 528 (−0.2%) · GOOGL 351 (−0.1%) · AMZN 256 (−1.2%) · AAPL 331 (−1.7%), Apple −2.4% premarket with no headline. Lumentum +4.2%.

PLTR 201 (+1.2%). Second green day while everything AI bled. Burry's favorite short refuses to die.

MSTR 155 (+3.1%) · CRCL 82.4 (+2.8%) · HOOD 109 (+1.3%) · COIN 176 (+0.1%). Crypto equities beat the coins two days running. Telecoms got cooked: T −6.6%, VZ −7.2%, TMUS −6.8% premarket on SpaceX. Towers (AMT, CCI, SBAC) +3–4.5%. Delta −2.7%: Q3 miss on a $4.1B fuel bill (+62%), full-year fuel now +$6B. Oil is a tax and the airlines are paying it.

₿Bitcoin

• Range 80,345–83,500. Lost 80.3k for about an hour, reclaimed 83k overnight. 83.5k is the only level that matters now; through it and Thursday was the local low. Below 80 and we talk again.
• ETF flows (Farside): −$244M Thursday (FBTC −$197M did all of it, IBIT only −$5M), −$485M Wednesday. Week-to-date −$700M. ETH ETFs: four straight red days, −$486M for the week. The funds are not the bid here.
• Positioning: Binance OI −3.8%, funding 0.002%, taker ratio 0.50. Nobody is levered long. That is why a $1B flush turned into a squeeze in twelve hours.
• Who is selling: MARA moved $81M of BTC to Galaxy as it "pivots to AI." Miner selling plus ETF outflows is the overhang; Trump's Iran line and shorts covering is the bid. The bid is winning this morning.
• 10/10 tomorrow. Last year's $19B liquidation day. Today's OI setup is the opposite of last year's: leverage already gone. Anniversary trades are a mid-curve thing.

🔀Alts

• STRK is the only thing ripping: +26% on $79M Hyperliquid volume, OI +166%. Two days of this. strkBTC incentives plus the v0.14.4 upgrade, and a 127M token unlock (1.3% of supply) lands Oct 15. Straight line up into a supply event: take profit, don't marry it.
• LIT 3.58 (+1.7%), the only perp-DEX token green for the second day. VVV 22.3 flat with OI +21% and MET −6.7% with OI +29%: shorts still pressing both. If BTC holds 83 those are the squeeze candidates.
• NEAR 4.82 (−4.8%) on $352M volume, OI −11%. Second day of a pure flush with no headline. Disgusting chart.
• ENA 0.216 flat, ONDO +0.6%: the yield/RWA names held while everything else got sold. XMR −2.6% while ZEC is +1.6%: the privacy trade is ZEC only.
• SOL 110.4 (−1.7%): the final Alpenglow-era upgrade cuts block time to 200ms and the chart still does not care. Needs memes to come back.

🐸Memes

Memes fried, Fartcoin excepted. Fartcoin +3.6% with OI +22% and volume up 3x: the only meme being bought with leverage. USELESS and PURR green on nothing. PENGU and PUMP bleeding OI into the drop: longs giving up, not shorts winning.

Launchpads: PUMP 0.0056 (−2.2%) on $266M volume, OI −13%. Bonk.fun reportedly ahead of pump.fun on launches and revenue (single source, still). The launchpad token is the meme-sector proxy and it keeps making lower highs. Trenches stay dead until BTC picks a direction above 83.5.

🛡Zcash

• 1,228. Looks great. Range 1,112–1,247: wicked to 1,112 in Thursday's flush, bought back through 1,200 in three hours and held. Up 1.6% while ETH and SOL are red. That is three straight days of relative strength.
• Positioning: OI +3.4% to $612M on Binance, funding 0.004%, $2.4B Binance volume (busiest alt again). $22M of longs liquidated vs $7M shorts in the flush, and price still closed higher. Shorts are losing this.
• News: Zcash devs target January for quantum-resistant payments after a "bunker mode" scare; NU7 lands Nov 5 with 25-second blocks. Grayscale's ZCSH crossed $1B in its first 30 days (Thursday). Shielded pool ~30% of supply.
• Zcon7 Oct 27–29, Cancún; Zcash turns 10 on Oct 28. Reclaim 1,247 and the 1,300s are open.

💧HYPE / Hyperliquid

• 85.6, range 82.57–86.50, funding exactly 0.01%, OI $1.72B (+0.8%). Flat on the day, ~7% off the unlock-day high. Only $9M of HYPE longs liquidated in a $1B market flush; this thing does not move anymore.
• Unlock watch: the Oct 6 release went OTC to one buyer; still no exchange inflows showing. Bitwise's BHYP keeps buying in $10M clips.
• HIP-3 is the venue: WTI perp $491M, Nasdaq-100 proxy $478M, Micron $301M, Brent $297M, SanDisk $224M, SpaceX $212M in 24h. Stocks and oil on Hyperliquid now out-trade every alt but ETH. Kalshi is filing for a perpetual WTI contract to compete.
• Where leverage is piling in (Hyperliquid, >$50M vol): STRK OI +166%, UNI +4.5%, ZEC +3.5%, HYPE +1.6%. Everything else is OI down.

🤖AI & pre-IPO

• SpaceX became a phone company. Bought Grain Management's nationwide 800 MHz low-band spectrum (up to 14 MHz paired), ~$8B cash per WSJ, FCC approval pending. Musk: "the last critical piece of the spectrum puzzle." Shotwell already said on the call she expects to take carrier customers. SPCX 166 (−0.5%) on the perp, +4% premarket to ~$167; $1.55B of perp volume, OI +19%. Listed stock, not pre-IPO, and it just erased Thursday's 4% drop. Carriers −7%, towers +4%, EU telecoms down in sympathy.
• OpenAI scare lasted a day. FT said annualized revenue is ~$50B not $70B; Bloomberg now reports OpenAI expects at least $70B annualized by year-end (gross vs net accounting). OpenAI perp 1,668 (−2.5%), wicked to 1,599 and recovered. Anthropic perp 2,033 (−1.1%); roadshow now reported for the week of Nov 9 with a listing before Thanksgiving at a $965B last round, $2T whisper. The Trump "doomerism" memo is the risk to that calendar.
• Chips: 24h perps still red (MU −1.7%, SNDK −2.4%, NVDA −0.6%, ORCL −3.7%, CRWV −3.8%) but Nasdaq futures +0.8% and the dip-buyers are back. NVDA 234 is 2% off the high; this was a flesh wound. TSMC Thursday and ASML Wednesday are the real tests.
• The bears: Burry expanded his shorts (NVDA, ORCL, PLTR) in August and got one good day. PLTR is up again. Dalio's "classic bubble" call aged 24 hours.

🗞Headlines

• SpaceX buys the last spectrum block and goes after AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile. $8B, 800 MHz, carriers −7% premarket, towers +4%. A $2T company just entered a $110B-a-year oligopoly. Long SPCX, short carriers is the trade of the week.
• Bessent: "we know where it is." Treasury targeting a $1B Iran-linked crypto seizure on top of the ~$1B already grabbed; says Tehran is "at the end of its tether." Iran is being sanctioned through stablecoins now. Bullish compliance, bearish Tether's Senate week.
• Blumenthal probes Cantor Fitzgerald × Tether and the Lutnick family stake. Commerce Secretary, Tether's banker, Senate letters. Headline risk for USDT, not price risk.
• Ledger investigating "wallet tampering": ~$86M reportedly drained from devices bought through a third-party reseller. Buy hardware wallets from the manufacturer. Always.
• DWF Labs sues BitGo for $141M over an alleged lock-up breach. Market maker vs custodian in open court: pass the popcorn.
• NFL to the Supreme Court: prediction-market sports contracts are gambling, not swaps. Coinbase already halted sports contracts in Michigan. The leagues want their cut. Kalshi/Polymarket's biggest category is now a court case.
• JPMorgan: $50B into crypto this year, momentum improving into Q4. Same day the ETFs printed −$244M. Both true; the flows are rotating, not leaving.
• Bitwise CEO calls the Dogecoin ETF failure "tragic": $12M total into spot DOGE funds, BWOW shuts Oct 14. ETF buyers and app degens are different people. Memes do not get a Wall Street bid.
• Delta −2.7%: fuel bill +62%. The oil tax has arrived at the income statement. Airlines are the Hormuz short.
• Thailand allows local BTC and ETH ETFs from Oct 16. Asia's retail bid keeps getting new plumbing.
• Siberian plague, day 7: lab worker's death still "pneumonia of unknown etiology," ~200 isolated, five hospitals locked down, WHO says moderate-to-low risk. Tail risk, not a trade. Yet.
• Netflix dropped the SBF series trailer. Three years from Bahamas penthouse to prestige TV. Everything in crypto is content eventually.

📅Calendar (ET)

• Fri 10/910:00 UMich sentiment (prelim; 48 exp, inflation expectations the tell)
• Sat 10/10One year since the $19B liquidation day
• Mon 10/12Bond market closed (Columbus Day), stocks open
• Tue 10/13JPM, C, GS, WFC Q3 · earnings season opens
• Wed 10/148:30 CPI (Sep) · BAC, MS · ASML Q3 · Bitwise DOGE ETF last trade
• Thu 10/158:30 PPI + retail sales · TSMC Q3 · STRK 127M unlock
• Fri 10/16Thailand BTC/ETH ETF rules take effect
• Tue 10/20SEC "Regulation Crypto Assets" comments close
• Wed 10/21Tesla Q3
• 10/27–29Zcon7, Cancún · Zcash turns 10 on 10/28
• Wed 10/282:00 FOMC decision
• Thu 11/5Zcash NU7 activation