Bitcoin fell under $80,000 on Thursday after US producer price data came in hotter than expected. TradingView data showed BTC/USD touching its lowest level since Sept. 18, down as much as 1.8% before recovering to about $81,000.

Inflation data adds pressure

The September producer price index rose 6.3% on an unadjusted 12-month basis, about 100 basis points above forecasts. Core PPI reached 5% versus an expected 4.4%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The monthly increase was the largest since March 2022, while the 12-month gain was the biggest since December 2022.

The report followed a consumer price index reading that also overshot estimates. Risk assets were already under strain from a tech sell-off in South Korea, where the KOSPI Composite Index dropped 7.5% on Thursday.

Bond yields move the other way

Economist Mohamed El-Erian said the PPI result was even more striking than the CPI number. Still, US bond yields did not rise with the inflation data. The 10-year Treasury yield was down almost 3% at the time of writing, near its lowest level since Sept. 23.

Robin Brooks, former chief FX strategist at Goldman Sachs, pointed to a weaker link between data surprises and yields. He said the 30-day correlation had fallen from near 0.6 earlier in 2026 to just below zero by the end of August. In his view, markets are paying more attention to the federal deficit than to incoming macro data.

Bitcoin support levels back in focus

BTC price action has brought two weekly support lines into view: the 21-week and 50-week exponential moving averages at $76,144 and $78,459. Trader Rekt Capital said Bitcoin could retest both and still keep its broader bullish trend. He noted that similar deviations have happened in early-stage bull markets, though those moves came after a bullish crossover of the two EMAs. Bitcoin has not yet seen that crossover.

Bitcoin also stayed below the $82,500 to $82,800 area that has acted as support in recent weeks. Analyst Aksel Kibar said the latest weekly close around $83,700 lacked breakout strength. A close inside the range could bring back wide consolidation between $60,000 and $82,800, with $75,000 as a level that would negate the rectangle bottom reversal idea.

For now, traders are watching whether the $80,000 break turns into a deeper pullback or another short-lived dip.