Bitcoin Breaks $118K as Citi Predicts $133K and Robinhood Pushes Tokenized Finance

US Government Shutdown Stress Met With Bitcoin Breakout

The U.S. government shutdown entered its second day on October 2, and Bitcoin responded with its highest daily close since August 15 closing above $117,000. That rally forced short sellers out of position, with more than $590 million in liquidations across the crypto market in 24 hours, according to CoinGlass.

The squeeze helped push the total crypto market cap back above $4 trillion. For traders, the combination of political gridlock in Washington and a clean breakout on the charts gave October the momentum many call “Uptober.”

BTCs Technical Break Above $117K

In the daily time frame, the BTC/USD pair rebounded from the 100-day simple moving average and broke a falling resistance line that had been intact since mid-August.

That move above $117K daily resistance marked a technical shift, with volume confirming stronger conviction behind the breakout, TradingView data showed.

Top Wall Street Predictions for Crypto in the Midterm Citi Revises Bitcoin Forecasts

Citigroup Inc. (NYSE: C), one of the ‘big four’ U.S. banks, has issued its end-of-year Bitcoin predictions. The banks target for BTC are as follows:

• End of Year target – $133k down from $135k.

• 12-months target – raised to $181k

• Bear base target – $83k

Citi expects Bitcoin to record a base cash inflow of about $7.5 billion before the end of this year. The bank noted that Bitcoin will continue to record a bullish outlook in 2026 fueled by the notable demand from institutional investors seeking to hedge against inflation.

Related: Will Altcoins ETH, XRP, and SOL Ride Bitcoins Shutdown-Fueled Momentum？

Robinhood Pushes Tokenized Finance

At the Token2049 in Singapore, Vlad Tenev, CEO at Robinhood, told a crowd of crypto enthusiasts that tokenization of Real World Assets (RWA) will close the gap between web3 and traditional finance.

“Crypto and traditional finance have been living in separate worlds, but theyll fully merge. In the future, everything will be on-chain in some form, and the distinction will disappear,” Tenev noted.

Already, Robinhood has launched tokenized stocks trading in Europe to democratize the U.S.TradFi to the global market. Meanwhile, Tenev noted that the mainstream adoption of tokenized assets may take longer than anticipated since the traditional rails continue to work even though with notable friction.