XBT is down 69% in 18 days, and the unlock hasn't even hit
The unlock is still about five days away, and XBT is already in a bear market. The price closed at $937 on Oct 8. It traded around $293 on Monday, down 69% in 18 days, 47% in a week and 24% in the last 24 hours. The market isn't waiting for block 979,920. It's pricing it in.
The slide
| When | Daily close | Change to today |
|---|---|---|
| All-time high, Sep 5 | $1,095 (intraday $1,205 on Sep 6) | -73% |
| October high, Oct 8 | $937 | -69% |
| Two weeks ago, Oct 12 | $606 | -52% |
| One week ago, Oct 19 | $555 | -47% |
| Today, Oct 26 | $293 (low $285) |
For context, this isn't the floor XBT has seen. It closed at $154 on Sep 12, during the first crash after launch. Volume is up, not down: about 3,790 XBT ($1.28 million) traded in the last 24 hours, roughly double the 1,866 XBT a day we measured on Oct 21.
The cliff, five days out
- About 20,260 XBT of locked mining rewards become spendable under consensus at block 979,920, around Nov 1. Our tracker counts 17,814 now, and every block until then adds 3.125 more.
- That's more than five days of trading volume at today's pace, and about 13 times the buy orders resting within 50% of the price (below).
- Most of it won't move at once. Knots relay policy holds each reward for 6,480 blocks, so spends that go through the mempool drip out over about 45 days. Pools that mine their own spends can skip that. How that works
- Where it sits: AlphaPool and Lazarus mined the largest shares. NeoxEX's own reserves page lists 5,214 XBT "maturing," newly mined coins paid straight to miners' deposit addresses there, credited when they mature.
The order books today
| Buy orders | Oct 21 ($561) | Oct 26 ($293) |
|---|---|---|
| Within 2% of the price | 5 XBT ($3,000) | 59 XBT ($17,000) |
| Within 10% | 163 XBT ($87,000) | 309 XBT ($87,000) |
| Within 20% | 547 XBT ($276,000) | 748 XBT ($195,000) |
| Within 50% | 1,107 XBT ($465,000) | 1,560 XBT ($349,000) |
Buyers have stepped in by count: there are more XBT of bids at every level than five days ago. But at half the price, the same dollar demand buys twice the coins, so in dollars the books are no deeper. Most of the depth is on NeoxEX's bitcoin pair (217 XBT within 10%). NonKYC, which trades the most, has only about 12 XBT of bids within 10%.
Miners feel it too
- At 45.6 PH/s, one TH/s of hash earns about 0.0099 XBT a day. At $293 that's about $2.88 per TH a day, down from about $5.90 a week ago.
- Difficulty is set to rise about 6.4% around Oct 30, which cuts that to about $2.71.
- That's barely above the $2.56 to $2.78 per TH a day it costs to rent hash on TideHash. The rent-instead-of-buy trade is nearly gone, and the rewards are locked anyway.
What's still unknown
- The rule. The 180-day rolling lock (#468) is in the Knots rc5 test build but not merged or released. Whatever ships only changes rewards mined from block 979,919 on. It doesn't stop this unlock.
- Who sells. Moved isn't sold. Pools pay miners, and many miners hold. A big share sits with two pools and one exchange, so a few decisions matter most.
- Whether the selling is already done. Markets often fall into a known event and bounce after it. They also sometimes keep falling. We don't know which this is.
Our take
XBT has done this before. It lost about 86% in its first week, then went up more than six times by Oct 8. A 69% drawdown going into a known supply event is brutal, but it's what thin markets do when everyone can see a date on the calendar. If you're selling, split large orders and check the book first. If you're buying, the bids are thin on the way down too. Either way, size so you're fine if it's another 50% lower or 50% higher next week.
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Method: daily closes from xbt.live's price history (NeoxEX XBT/USDC). 24-hour stats from NeoxEX and NonKYC tickers, Oct 26 at about 19:00 UTC. Order books from NonKYC (BTCB2/USDT) and NeoxEX (BTCB2/USDC, BTCB2/BTC, BTCB2/USDT), measured from each book's mid price; the BTC pair converted at $79,970. Dust bids far below the price left out. Locked total from the xbt.live tracker at block 979,135 plus 783 blocks at 3.125 XBT. NeoxEX maturing figure from neoxa.exchange/reserves. Not financial advice.
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