Key Takeaways
On the back of last week’s Squawk covering ‘Uptober’, and the current 7% gain for the month, how is the market pricing their expectations heading to the end of the year?
Drawing upon option market data, we can see that there is a key focus at $140k USD.
Prediction markets show an expectation of new all-time highs again in 2025.
Chart of the week: Looking at Q4 performance last post-halving year vs this year.
It’s the second week of October and Bitcoin hasn’t disappointed investors. At the time of writing Bitcoin is currently up a cool 7% for the month.
If you haven’t already, check out our last Squawk for a breakdown on why Octobers in years like 2025 have resulted in double digit gains (but, like always, nothing is a guarantee).
So considering October’s historical prestige, does this match the current consensus? What is the market thinking? That’s what we are here to dissect this week.
Let’s dig in.
Option markets
Don’t get too hung up if you’re not sure what options markets are or how to read this data. All you need to know is that they are a way for the market to express where they believe Bitcoin is heading into the end of 2025.
We can use this data to work out some of the key expectations among investors.
)
Looking at this, I have a few takeaways.
There appears to be a heavy focus on $140k USD by the bulls in the market, with $1.21 billion USD in notional value currently sitting at that price level. After that we can see a steady spread of value between $150k to $210k.
Option markets are forward looking and right now, this data suggests investors are expecting >$140k USD by the 26th of December.
Another data point to reinforce this is the put/call ratio, which is 0.46. Think of this as a ratio of bears-to-bulls.
Right now, the bulls outnumber the bears.
Prediction markets
Another novel way we can look at what the market thinks will happen next is using prediction markets.
Polymarket, for those unfamiliar, is a platform where people bet real money on the outcome of future events across many categories. It can be used to give us a crowd-sourced view of market sentiment towards… pretty much anything.
Below is a current snapshot of the Polymarket odds for Bitcoin reaching a new all-time high again in 2025.
)
Once again, investors are betting on more upside.
But safety in numbers isn’t always the smartest play – just ask Warren Buffet. So, is this an age-old case of the crowd being wrong, and if so, how can we tell?
Thankfully, there is data we can look at to give us a reality check on what happened in the past when the market was at a similar point relative to the Bitcoin halving. Let’s take a look at how things played for Bitcoin last time round.
Chart of the week: Comparing the last quarter of 2021 to 2025
Firstly (again), this isn’t a guarantee of what to expect next, but let’s look at another data point that might be driving decision making in the market today.
We are highlighting the previous Q4 period in a post-halving year. And if you’re wondering why we are looking at post-halving years, checkout our latest Tapping into Crypto podcast to get the low down.
)
The key take away from the chart is that we can compare where we are right now. We are currently in Q4 in a post-halving year, like 2021. And historically this has been a period of relative strength in Bitcoin’s price movement.
So the market is expecting higher next. And if we are going to see these expectations realised, it makes sense that crypto holds onto its current momentum.
It feels like the next few days and weeks will create a lot of sweaty hands, as this is shaping up to be a real make or break moment for Bitcoin.
Swyftx Flows
The buy-to-sell ratio for unique Swyftx orders is nominally >$20,000 AUD (rolling data over the last 7 days, captured at 09:00 am AEST).
)
)