Bitcoin slides toward 11-week low near $73,500 after hotter US CPI print

BTC retests Sunday's low

TradingView data cited by Cointelegraph showed BTC/USD falling to $73,518. That's nearly the same low it set on Sunday, which was its lowest level since Aug. 21.

What the CPI print showed

The October release didn't include a year-on-year component, because data wasn't collected during the 2025 US government shutdown. Monthly growth still slowed from September's 0.6%. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics release, shelter rose 0.3% and accounted for over 30% of the monthly all-items increase. Food rose 0.5% (food at home up 0.4%, food away from home up 0.5%).

Energy cooled a lot. The index rose 0.7% in October after a 5.2% move in September.

Economist Robin Brooks called the result "discouraging," while noting that the oil-price spike had contributed to the September numbers.

All the details of this CPI report are discouraging, but October was also the peak of the second big oil price shock this year and that’s obviously going to bleed into core CPI inflation

Fed odds turn more hawkish

Federal Reserve governor Christopher Waller said in a speech on Tuesday that he favored a 25-basis-point hike in December even if inflation cooled from September. Before the report, CME Group's FedWatch Tool showed markets pricing a 96.3% chance of a 25 bp hike at the December meeting. After it, the odds turned more hawkish: 85.3% for 25 bp and 14.7% for 50 bp.

Stocks felt it too, at least at first.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite opened 0.6% lower before recovering those losses. Cointelegraph also pointed to strong labor-market data as a headwind for US equities. Mosaic Asset Company, a trading resource, said it saw signs of "extreme" sell-side pressure on the Nasdaq, which it said could mean the index had formed a long-term bottom. Its read leans on the equity put/call ratio, which jumped above 1.0 (higher than during the trade war selloff in April 2025, according to Mosaic).