Bitcoin's Uptober Fades: Will BTC Drop Below $100,000 by Month-End?

October has historically delivered strong gains for Bitcoin and the wider crypto market, so much so that it’s been dubbed “Uptober”. But October 2025 has been anything but bullish, thanks to renewed global trade tensions.

BTC slumped to its lowest level in five months after a selloff that wiped out over $19 billion in leveraged positions. It was the biggest single-day liquidation event in crypto history, as Cryptonews previously reported. Data from Polymarket last week showed a 52% chance that Bitcoin would drop below the psychological $100,000 mark this month, reflecting investor unease amid rising geopolitical tensions and weakening risk appetite.

As of this writing, BTC is down 6% for October, according to CoinGlass data, compared with an average gain of 19.7% for the month since 2013. Over the past 12 years, Bitcoin has posted losses in October only three times. Now, while the Polymarket odds have narrowed, analysts warn there’s a real danger Bitcoin could still fall further due to a fluid geopolitical and macroeconomic backdrop. So, what went wrong with “Uptober” 2025?

Sources: TradingView

Bitcoin’s Seasonality Trap

“October often shows favorable seasonality, and not just for Bitcoin,” Illia Otychenko, lead analyst at crypto exchange CEX.io, told Cryptonews. “Historically, April, July, October, November, and December have been among the strongest months for both stocks and Bitcoin. However, that doesn’t mean October should be good by default,” he added. Otychenko said Bitcoin’s poor performance this month has been “heavily shaped by rising risk aversion tied to renewed U.S.-China trade tensions” and a market that had already been showing signs of fatigue.

While the selloff rattled investors, Otychenko described the pullback as “a necessary cool down that may prevent a deeper correction later.”

Bitcoin’s latest all-time high of $126,000, set on October 6, came roughly 530 days after its most recent halving, a timing that matches previous cycle peaks. Halvings reduce the amount of BTC entering circulation.

The simple moving average, or SMA, is a metric used by traders to spot bullish or bearish trends.

Meanwhile, prediction markets like Polymarket have become popular for tracking investor sentiment in real time. Last week, traders on the platform gave a 52% chance that BTC would fall below $100,000 by the end of October.