Bitcoin edged higher to close out the trading week, a modest move that still leaves the largest cryptocurrency well below the record it set less than a year ago. The gain came on a day when nearly $16 billion in bitcoin options contracts expired, a scale of activity that dwarfs the day’s actual price change. For anyone holding bitcoin inside a retirement account, or weighing whether to, Friday’s number is a reminder of how far the asset still sits from its own recent peak.
Friday’s Close
Bitcoin rose about 1% on Friday to close at $84,408.79, according to TheStreet’s Sept. 25, 2026 market wrap. Fortune’s separate bitcoin price tracker put the level at $84,413.49, a gain of $470.87, or 0.56%, from the prior day, a figure close enough to TheStreet’s that the two independent market snapshots corroborate the roughly $84,400 level, according to Fortune’s Sept. 25, 2026 bitcoin price report.
Inside the planner: A coin still down roughly a third from last October’s peak raises a basis-tracking question a market wrap never answers: which lot, bought at which price, actually gets sold to cover this year’s distribution. The Retirement Tax & Withdrawal Planner works through the Roth bracket-fill and RMD-schedule calculators built for exactly that kind of sequencing question.
Still Well Below The October Peak
Even after Friday’s gain, bitcoin remained about 30% below its all-time high of $126,198.07, a level it reached on Oct. 6, 2025, and roughly $24,600 lower than where it traded one year earlier, per Fortune’s price report. That gap matters for anyone who bought near last October’s peak: a 1% Friday gain does not come close to recovering a position that remains roughly 30% below its high point, and it underscores how much more volatile bitcoin’s year has been than the broader stock market’s.
A Nearly $16 Billion Options Expiry In The Background
Friday’s modest price move happened against the backdrop of a large derivatives event: approximately $15.6 billion in bitcoin options contracts expired on the Deribit exchange, with “max pain,” the price at which the largest number of option holders lose money, sitting around $76,000, according to TheStreet’s market wrap. An options expiry of that size can itself add short-term volatility to a coin’s price as traders adjust positions heading into the settlement, which is part of why a roughly 1% move on an options-expiry day is a smaller reaction than the size of that expiry might suggest.
Why The Two Market Snapshots Differ Slightly
TheStreet’s 0.99% figure and Fortune’s 0.56% figure both describe Friday’s bitcoin move but were pulled at different moments in a market that trades continuously, unlike stocks, which have a single closing bell. Bitcoin has no official close, so any two data providers checking the price minutes apart can post slightly different percentage changes even while describing the same broad move, which is why this article cites both rather than treating either as the sole final figure.
The Money Angle: Volatility Inside A Retirement Account
Bitcoin’s swings matter differently to a retiree than to a younger investor with decades to recover from a downturn. A position still 30% below its October 2025 peak, inside an IRA or a 401(k) that a retiree may need to draw from this year, carries a real risk of locking in a loss if a required minimum distribution or a planned withdrawal forces a sale while the price sits well under its high. Friday’s roughly 1% gain is a data point in that ongoing volatility, not a signal that the asset has stabilized at a new level.
Sequencing A Sale Around A Depressed Price
A required minimum distribution has to come out of a traditional IRA or 401(k) on the account’s own calendar, regardless of whether a particular holding inside it is up or down for the year. Someone who holds bitcoin as one piece of a larger retirement account still generally has the option to satisfy that year’s distribution from a different, less depressed holding, and let a position sitting 30% under its peak recover before it has to be sold. That kind of sequencing decision, spreading a required withdrawal across several holdings rather than pulling automatically from whichever one is easiest to liquidate, is the sort of calculation that gets harder to do correctly the more account types and asset classes a household is juggling at once.
Bitcoin Held Outside A Retirement Account Carries A Separate Tax Layer
Bitcoin bought and held directly, rather than inside an IRA or a 401(k), is treated as property rather than currency for federal tax purposes, according to the IRS’s digital-assets guidance, which traces to Notice 2014-21. That means a sale at Friday’s roughly $84,400 level triggers a capital gain or loss measured against the price the coin was originally bought at and how long it was held, not against its October 2025 peak, with the IRS drawing the line between short-term and long-term treatment at the one-year holding mark. That distinction matters for anyone weighing a sale after this week’s modest bounce: a holder who bought well below Friday’s price still owes capital-gains tax on the difference even while the coin itself sits 30% under its all-time high, a combination of a taxable gain and a below-peak price that is easy to reconcile incorrectly without records of the original purchase price and date.
A Modest Friday Bounce Doesn’t Settle A Cost-Basis Question
Bitcoin’s roughly 1% Friday gain still leaves it about 30% under its October 2025 high, a gap that changes what selling into a required minimum distribution or a planned withdrawal actually costs in capital-gains tax depending on when a particular holding was bought. Neither market report works out which lot, or which account, should absorb that tax exposure first.
The Retirement Tax & Withdrawal Planner includes an RMD schedule calculator and a Roth bracket-fill calculator, tools built for weighing a depressed holding against the rest of a household’s accounts before a required sale.
Open the Roth bracket-fill calculator in The Retirement Tax & Withdrawal Planner.
This article was produced with AI assistance and checked against the primary sources linked above.
Warren Cohen is a finance writer based in Phoenix, Arizona, covering personal finance topics including credit, banking, and beginner investing. He earned his degree in business administration from Arizona State University and began his career working in consumer finance, where he gained direct experience with lending and credit systems. He now writes for personal finance websites and fintech platforms, focusing on clear, practical content that helps readers make informed financial decisions.
