Red Uptober: Bitcoin Holds Strong Through $19B Liquidation Event

Happy Monday Bitcoiners - it’s Bam with another weekly update!

Each week, we condense the most impactful news releases into a concise, easy-to-read update so you’re always in the know!

Notable events this week include 👇

• Square flips the switch for 4M merchants to start accepting BTC payments.

• Tariff Tantrum 2.0 sparks the biggest liquidation wipeout in crypto history.

• Luxembourg’s sovereign wealth fund is Europe’s first with BTC exposure.

Let’s dive in⚡

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Latest News 📰

🙌 Adoption

• Square now lets merchants automatically stack Bitcoin from their daily sales directly through their point-of-sale terminals. Bitcoin payment acceptance will go live for their 4M+ users on November 10.

• Steak n’ Shake sparks backlash after posting an X poll about accepting ETH for payments. It was suspended within hours, with the company reaffirming its “allegiance to Bitcoiners.”

• Bitcoin Core v30.0 is now live, removing the 80-byte OP_RETURN cap after months of debate. Critics fear spam and bloat, while supporters say it simply reflects current practices and fights miner centralization.

⚖️ Legal

• Roger Ver will pay $48M to settle US tax fraud charges tied to concealing Bitcoin holdings before renouncing citizenship in 2014. If he meets the terms, prosecutors will drop the case entirely.

• South Korea’s tax agency warns crypto holders that unpaid tax debts could lead to home raids and cold wallet seizures, using blockchain tracking tools to trace hidden coins and confiscate hardware.

• Senator Cynthia Lummis responds to Jack Dorsey’s call for a de minimis tax exemption on everyday Bitcoin transactions, noting that she’s already introduced legislation to make it a reality.

📈 Markets

• Morgan Stanley will now let all clients, regardless of net worth, risk tolerance, or account type, invest in Bitcoin funds, ending past restrictions and matching access offered by Coinbase and Robinhood.

• Crypto markets saw their largest flash crash in history on October 10, with $19B liquidated in under an hour. Bitcoin briefly dropped to $102K after Trump threatened to escalate the trade war with China.

• Opendoor, a $7 billion real estate firm, announced it will begin accepting Bitcoin for home purchases, allowing the company to tap into a growing market of buyers who hold large amounts of Bitcoin.

🏦 Treasury

• Luxembourg’s sovereign wealth fund, FSIL, becomes the first Eurozone state fund to allocate 1% of its holdings to Bitcoin ETFs.

• Deutsche Bank expects both Bitcoin and gold to appear on central bank balance sheets by 2030, as a weakening dollar and geopolitical shifts redefine global reserves.

• Lib Work, a Tokyo-based 3D-printed housing firm, invests $3.3 million in Bitcoin as part of its growing corporate treasury strategy to hedge against inflation.

⛏️ Mining

• HIVE Digital’s stock surged over 25% after a strong September report, revealing it mined 267 BTC, an 8% increase month-over-month and 138% year-over-year.

• China’s hidden hashrate is back in focus after Luxor’s Q4 2025 update, estimating it at 14.05% of global Bitcoin compute power (≈145 EH/s), ranking third worldwide behind the US and Russia.

• Bitfarms, a Canadian Bitcoin miner, converts its $300M debt facility with Macquarie into project-specific financing to fund Phase 1 of its Panther Creek data center in Pennsylvania, scheduled to go live by late 2026.

🗳️ Politics

• The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado for advancing democracy. A vocal Bitcoiner, she calls BTC a “humanitarian tool” and a “vital means of resistance.”

• Massachusetts State Senator Peter Durant sponsors a bill to establish a Bitcoin strategic reserve, allocating up to 10% of the Commonwealth Stabilization Fund and including seized digital assets.

• ECB President Lagarde still insists that BTC “has no underlying value.” She says she “knows social media will hit me like crazy” for saying so, but hasn’t changed her mind.

🧠 Bitcoin Trivia 🧠

Bam’s 2 Sats 🧢

Red Uptober Whiplash: Adoption Accelerates as Markets Get Wrecked

On both the adoption front and in the markets, Bitcoin had a wild week. Volatility roared back as BTC hit new highs above $126,000 on Monday, then plunged $20,000 in the largest liquidation event in crypto market history.

Let’s dive in.

The Slow March Toward Everyday Adoption

In my view, adoption begins personally. Every Bitcoiner eventually reaches a point where their portfolio is mostly BTC, both from conviction and from Bitcoin’s growth over time. That’s when it feels natural to start living on a Bitcoin standard and separate from the fiat world entirely.

Earlier in one’s Bitcoin journey, during the so-called hardcore stacking phase, the goal is simple: accumulate as much as possible. But many of those same stackers are business owners, and eventually, they decide to accumulate Bitcoin through their business as well. That’s when accepting Bitcoin starts to make sense.

This dynamic slows adoption in countries with relatively stable fiat currencies like the U.S. and those in Europe, where spending dollars or euros is still more convenient. But as Bitcoin’s price rises, more holders want to spend it and quickly realize too few merchants accept it.

From my perspective, the solution lies in interoperability.

This week marked two major leaps for Bitcoin payments with Money Badger in South Africa and Square in the US. Both are enabling merchants to accept Bitcoin while still settling instantly in local currency without holding BTC themselves.

That means Bitcoiners will soon be able to live entirely on Bitcoin, shopping with merchants that use these systems. No need to wait for “hyperbitcoinization.” It’s happening quietly, one payment processor at a time.

The $19 Billion Lesson

Now for the chaotic side of the story.

On Friday, Trump announced “massive” tariff hikes on China over a rare earth dispute, conveniently just after the stock market closed. The result was a sharp crypto sell-off followed by a cascade of Bitcoin liquidations.

Total liquidations surpassed both the COVID crash ($1.2B) and the FTX collapse ($1.6B) combined, reaching a staggering $19.16 billion and wiping out thousands of overleveraged traders.

Still, from a Bitcoin perspective, it wasn’t as severe as past sell-offs. The price fell about 16% at its lowest before stabilizing under a 10% drop. The broader crypto market, however, was a bloodbath with flash crashes to zero and leveraged portfolios completely wiped out.

If you’re in the mood for a little crypto trader schadenfreude, there’s a thread packed with liquidation horror stories that’s well worth the scroll.

In short, it was a classic case of “f#ck around and find out.” Tired of waiting for alt-season, many traders turned to leverage to chase gains the spot market wasn’t giving them.

Maybe I’m exaggerating, but you know who didn’t flinch during this “catastrophic” crash that took us all the way back to prices from two weeks ago? Bitcoiners.

If you’re reading this, I hope this wasn’t a hard lesson for you or anyone close to you. But everyone needs one of these moments to understand: Bitcoin isn’t a sprint. It’s a marathon.

The takeaway is simple: keep stacking sats, secure them in cold storage, and wait.

Now let’s give a warm welcome to all the newly minted Bitcoin maximalists born this Friday. Hope they stick around. 😃 

Stay safe and keep on stacking!
-Bam

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