Bitcoin Below 80K Again: The Fed Bounce Fades as Alphabet Drops 10% After Hours

Bitcoin below 80K again, and the Fed bounce lasted one evening. BTC climbed to $81,788 after Wednesday’s hawkish hold, its first green Fed day of the year, then gave it all back overnight. It trades at $79,840 at the time of writing, down 2.4% from that high.

The Fed wasn’t the only thing on the screen. Alphabet reported right after the US close, and Wall St Engine’s summary shows where it went wrong:

Wall St Engine @wallstengine

ALPHABET $GOOGL Q3’26 EARNINGS HIGHLIGHTS

🔹 EPS: $2.12
🔹 Revenue: $127.6B (Est. $128.22B) 🔴; +25% YoY
🔹 Google Cloud Revenue: $30.7B (Est. $29.15B) 🟢
🔹 Search & Other: $63.4B (Est. $64.99B) 🔴
🔹 YouTube Ads: $11.2B (Est. $11.4B) 🔴
🔹 CapEx: $51.4B (Est. $55.2B) 🟢
🔹

9:07 PM · Oct 28, 2026 View on X

Why Did Alphabet Stock Fall After Hours?

Alphabet stock fell 10% after hours because profit came in far below forecasts, even with sales up 25%. Class A shares closed at $324.89 on Nasdaq, and Alphabet stock after hours bottomed at $287.90 before ending near $292.50.

The Alphabet earnings release shows $2.12 a share, down from $2.87 a year ago. Wall Street expected about $3.02. Sales were close to plan: revenue rose 25% to $127.6 billion, just under the $128.2 billion expected, and Google Cloud more than doubled to $30.7 billion.

The hole sits lower down. Alphabet booked an $8.7 billion loss on equity securities, which CFO Anat Ashkenazi said on the call came “primarily” from an unrealized loss on its SpaceX stake. That paper loss alone cut 55 cents off earnings per share.

Strip it out and Alphabet still earned only $2.67, short of the $3.02 forecast. So SpaceX explains part of the miss, not all of it. The other part is spending: Alphabet spent a record $51.4 billion on data centers and equipment in the quarter, and free cash flow came in at minus $9.1 billion, the second negative quarter in a row. It kept its 2026 capex range of $195 billion to $205 billion and expects the number to “increase significantly” in 2027.

How Did Bitcoin React to Alphabet?

Bitcoin didn’t drop on the headline. It held around $81,300 for four more hours while stocks digested the numbers, then broke between 01:00 and 02:00 UTC, falling from $81,106 to under $80,000 in one hourly candle.

Tokenized stocks priced the miss first. GOOGLB, the Alphabet token on Binance that trades around the clock, dropped from $325.82 to $297.58 in the hour of the release and is down 10.3% over 24 hours at $293.21. Volume in that one hour hit $7.0 million, more than four times any hour before it.

SIDE TRAIL: Big Tech Earnings This Week: What Microsoft, Alphabet and Amazon Mean for Bitcoin

It wasn’t all Big Tech. Microsoft, which reported at the same time, rose about 3% after hours. Nasdaq 100 futures still slipped 1.4%, and Bitcoin has fallen on every day this month that the Nasdaq 100 lost 2% or more. The worst was October 22, the day after Meta’s results, when Bitcoin slid from $84,490 to $81,494 between the two Wall Street closes.

Bitcoin Below 80K: Where Is the Next Support?

For the Bitcoin price, the first support is $79,221, the October 24 low and the lowest price since September 18. Bitcoin dipped under $80,000 on four days in a row from October 24 and closed above it every time. A daily close below $80,000 would be the first since September 17.

Below that, the next swing low sits at $76,264. On the way up, the 50-day moving average at $81,975 capped Wednesday’s bounce, just above the $81,788 post-Fed high.

TRAIL MAP: Fed Holds Rates at 3.75–4.00%. Is a December Hike Still Coming?

Thursday doesn’t get quieter. Q3 GDP and PCE, the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge, land at 12:30 UTC (8:30 a.m. in Washington), per the BEA schedule. Amazon, Coinbase and Strategy all report after the US close, so Bitcoin below 80K gets another Big Tech test before the weekend.

Written by

Satoshi Flipper

In crypto since 2017, trading stocks for over 20 years. MBA. Follows the economic data and US markets closely.

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