Crypto market weekly review: Oct 12 – Oct 18, 2026

Bitcoin posted its second losing week in a row from Oct. 12 to Oct. 18, slipping 2.0% to a $82,116 close on Binance 4-hour candles. U.S. inflation did most of the damage: consumer prices rose 3.7% year over year in September, producer prices jumped 6.3%, and bitcoin dropped to $79,800, its lowest level in 30 days. On Friday, Fed Chair Kevin Warsh declined to signal an October rate hike, and prediction markets quickly priced one out. For today's picture, see the daily brief; last week's edition is here: review for Oct. 5⁠–⁠11.

The week in 5 points

BTC −2.0% on the week: open $83,773, close $82,116, high $84,352 (early Monday, Oct. 12, ET), low $79,800 (Thursday, Oct. 15, 8 AM–noon ET candle) on Binance 4-hour candles. The $4,552 range equals 5.4% of the opening price, versus 7.6% a week earlier. The weekly low was the lowest price in 30 days.
Hot inflation: September CPI rose 3.7% year over year against a 3.6% forecast (our coverage of the BLS release), and producer prices climbed 1.3% month over month and 6.3% year over year (BLS). CME FedWatch odds of an October hike jumped from 21% to 53.7% after the CPI print.
Nearly $1B liquidated in a day: $951.4M of leveraged positions were wiped out in the 24 hours to the morning of Oct. 15, including $876.3M of longs (The Block, citing CoinGlass); another $771M went on Oct. 13 (our coverage).
ETFs bleed for a second week: spot bitcoin ETFs lost $228.6M over five sessions, ether ETFs $320.0M and Solana ETFs $25.5M (SoSoValue, our ETF flows page). CoinShares data cited by FinanceFeeds put total outflows from crypto funds at $434M.
Altcoins lag: ETH −5.0%, SOL −6.5%, XRP −7.3%, while STRK fell 50.9% as a speculative rally unwound. The Fear & Greed Index slid from 69 to 53 over the week.

The week in numbers

CoinLab data only, no news recap.

Spot ETF flows


Net flow for the week	−$228.6M
Best day	Oct 13: +$175.6M
Worst day	Oct 14: −$261.5M
Total net assets	$104.3B
ETH ETFs for the week	−$320.0M
SOL ETFs for the week	−$25.5M

By fund and by day — on the ETF flows page.

Derivatives


Average Binance funding, per 8h	+0.0037% (+4.1% annualized)

Sentiment and liquidity


Fear & Greed Index	69 → 53 (low 53, high 69)
Fed Net Liquidity	$5.87T, +7B over the week

Top-100 movers of the week

Gainers		Losers
XMR	+10.8%	STRK	−41.2%
INJ	+8.0%	PUMP	−23.9%
TIA	+2.9%	ZRO	−22.6%
LEO	+1.6%	NIGHT	−20.7%
ARB	+1.2%	RAY	−20.6%

Stablecoins excluded; 7-day change at publication time.

Data: Binance, SoSoValue, alternative.me, FRED, CoinMarketCap. Not investment advice.

Price and technicals

The week opened with an attempt to hold $84,000. Bitcoin reached $84,352 early on Monday, then fell to $81,034 on Monday evening ET as South Korean stocks tumbled, before buyers quickly pulled it back. Tuesday closed at $83,169, the best daily close of the week. After that the market traded from one data release to the next: the CPI print on Wednesday sent BTC back toward $81,700, it slid to $80,226 overnight, and Thursday's producer-price report pushed it through $80,000 to $79,800. Buyers stepped in there: Thursday closed at $82,246, and the weekend stayed inside a tight $80,700⁠–⁠$82,300 range.

Daily closes (UTC) on Binance: Monday $81,850, Tuesday $83,169, Wednesday $81,682, Thursday $82,246, Friday $81,616, Saturday $81,491, Sunday $82,116. Weekly Binance spot volume was 101,076 BTC, up 3% from 98,019 BTC the week before; Thursday was the busiest day at 22,563 BTC.

On the moving averages, our data puts the 50-day average of daily closes near $81,400, the 200-day at $72,534 and the 200-week at $66,847. Price spent the whole week above the 50-day line without pulling away from it, so in practice the market is sitting on it. The daily RSI(14) stood at 52 on Monday morning, neutral territory, while the MACD histogram was negative (−340): downside momentum has faded but hasn't turned into an uptrend. The Mayer Multiple is 1.14.

The levels that matter for the new week are the ones the market has already marked: $79,800⁠–⁠$80,000 below (the weekly and 30-day low) and $84,000⁠–⁠$84,400 above (the week's two highs). On Polymarket, as of Monday morning, traders gave bitcoin a 38.5% chance of hitting $87,500 in October and a 30.5% chance of reaching $77,500. For how similar stretches of history played out, see fractals; for the summary indicators, see Market Pulse.

Derivatives and options

Leverage was flushed mostly from the long side. Besides the two liquidation waves ($771M by the morning of Oct. 13 and $951.4M by the morning of Oct. 15, nearly 90% longs in both cases), ether took the hardest hit: The Block reported ETH down 6.5% in 24 hours on Oct. 15. Our full breakdown is in the $951M liquidations story.

There was no sign of overheating. Average Binance funding for the week was +0.0037% per 8 hours, about 4.1% annualized, a calm reading. By Monday morning funding was back at the 0.01% baseline on Binance and Hyperliquid, with Bybit at 0.0064% and OKX at 0.0055%. Open interest in Binance BTC futures stood at 94,597 BTC (about $7.84B), nearly flat over 7 days (−0.2%): traders reshuffled positions rather than cutting them. Long accounts made up 63.8% of the total on Binance.

Options: Deribit's DVOL volatility index was 38.2 on Monday morning, versus 37.3 a week earlier, so the swings barely rattled the options market. Open interest in Deribit BTC options was 391,158 BTC (about $32.4B), with a put/call ratio of 0.60. The big date ahead is the monthly expiry on Oct. 30 at 08:00 UTC: 149,066 BTC of open interest, max pain at $78,000 and a put/call ratio of 0.51 (Deribit data, our collection). That max pain level is $4,000 below the weekly close.

ETFs and institutions

Spot bitcoin ETFs swung through the week: −$65.4M on Monday, +$175.6M on Tuesday, −$261.5M on Wednesday after CPI, +$5.1M on Thursday and −$82.4M on Friday. The total came to −$228.6M, leaving the funds with $104.3B in assets on Friday. According to Wu Blockchain, BlackRock's IBIT led the week's outflows with $165M (our coverage).

Day	BTC ETFs	ETH ETFs
Mon, Oct. 12	−$65.4M	−$85.4M
Tue, Oct. 13	+$175.6M	+$24.8M
Wed, Oct. 14	−$261.5M	−$129.5M
Thu, Oct. 15	+$5.1M	−$60.2M
Fri, Oct. 16	−$82.4M	−$69.7M
Week	−$228.6M	−$320.0M

Data: SoSoValue.

Ether ETFs had only one positive day, Tuesday. Solana ETFs lost $25.5M, with outflows on all five days.

Corporate buyers kept going, though more cautiously. Strategy bought just 250 BTC for about $21.5M at an average of $86,194 in the week of Oct. 5⁠–⁠11, bringing its holdings to 848,250 BTC, while spending $192.4M that same week to buy back its STRC preferred shares (our coverage). Strive was the most active buyer, filing two 8-Ks back to back for 3,311 and 2,822 BTC: 6,133 BTC in total, taking its stack to 35,595 BTC (SEC, our coverage). Bitmine added 12,532 ETH, lifting its holdings to 6,028,946 ETH (our coverage).

The biggest corporate story was MSCI. On the evening of Oct. 15 the index provider adopted a rule on "non-operating companies" that will bar such firms from its global indexes. MSCI will publish the final list on Nov. 11, and the changes take effect after the close on Nov. 30. Strategy isn't named in the announcement, but it was the largest company slated for removal in MSCI's simulation; MSTR shares fell 6.46% on Oct. 16.

Banks kept moving into the sector: Standard Chartered opened BTC and ETH trading to clients in the UAE (our coverage), and Deutsche Bank is preparing to launch BTC and ETH custody for institutions (our coverage).

On-chain and mining

On-chain readings remain moderate. Bitcoin's MVRV was 1.52 on Oct. 18 (Coin Metrics): the market price is 52% above the average price at which coins last moved. The short-term holder cost basis (BGeometrics, as of Oct. 12) is $74,415, so recent buyers are still about 10% in profit on average. Our composite "market temperature" ranged between 33 and 38 out of 100 during the week, the lower half of the scale.

Network hashrate stood at about 1,022 EH/s on Monday morning, with difficulty at 140.6T. The next adjustment is expected around Oct. 30, with an estimated change of −1.9% after +5.9% last time. Fees are close to zero at 1⁠–⁠3 sat/vB. There are 77,882 blocks left until the halving, estimated for April 2028.

Two mining stories stood out. Binance is shutting its mining pool on Nov. 10; according to CoinDesk, the pool's hashrate has fallen 65% since December 2025 to about 9.2 EH/s (our coverage). And wallets linked to MARA moved 1,000 BTC (about $82.8M) to Binance and Gate over five days; no sale has been confirmed (our coverage).

Stablecoin supply stands at $306.4B per DefiLlama, down 0.5% on the week, so no new money entered the system. Public companies hold about 1.30M BTC, or 6.2% of supply (CoinGecko).

Macro

Inflation set the tone. On Oct. 14 the BLS reported that consumer prices rose 3.7% year over year in September, up from 3.4% in August and above the 3.6% forecast. On Oct. 15 the producer price index showed +1.3% on the month and +6.3% on the year (BLS). After September's hike, the fed funds target range is 3.75%–4.00%.

Fed Chair Kevin Warsh shifted expectations. Speaking at the IMF annual meetings in Bangkok on Oct. 16, he declined to preview the Oct. 27⁠–⁠28 decision and said the world had "broadly conformed to our expectations" since the September meeting (ZeroHedge write-up). October hike odds on Polymarket fell; as of Monday morning, traders priced an 87.5% chance of no change and 11.5% for a quarter-point hike (Polymarket). For December, the market still expects a hike, at 76.5%.

Markets: the Nasdaq Composite lost about 4.5% on the week to 26,140, and the S&P 500 about 1.9% to 7,659, with Friday alone taking 2.1% and 1.1% off them (Gotrade, Yahoo Finance). The VIX rose 20% over five days to 18.3. South Korea's Kospi fell as much as 8% on Oct. 15. Bond yields eased, though: the 10-year Treasury yield was 5.09% on Oct. 16 (−13 bp on the week) and the 2-year 4.74% (−1 bp), per the U.S. Treasury. The dollar index DXY was at 101.9 (−0.6% over five days), gold at $4,208 an ounce, and WTI crude at $96.9 (+3.4% on the week but −4.4% on Friday).

In its Oct. 13 note, Wintermute named two conditions for a crypto recovery: lower and calmer long-term Treasury yields, and spot ETFs returning to net inflows (our coverage). This week the first condition started to fall into place; the second did not.

Altcoins of the week

Coin	Open	Close	Week
BTC	$83,773	$82,116	−2.0%
ETH	$2,537	$2,410	−5.0%
BNB	$754.2	$723.4	−4.1%
SOL	$111.35	$104.11	−6.5%
XRP	$1.410	$1.307	−7.3%
DOGE	$0.0868	$0.0794	−8.5%
HYPE	$86.70	$78.97	−8.9%
ZEC	$1,277	$1,131	−11.4%
ADA	$0.252	$0.221	−12.3%
STRK	$0.1231	$0.0605	−50.9%

USDT pairs on Binance, Monday 00:00 – Sunday 24:00 UTC.

Ethereum (−5.0%). Ether underperformed bitcoin for a second straight week, bottoming at $2,318 as ether ETFs shed $320M. ETH's share of total crypto market cap is 10.7%, versus 60.2% for bitcoin (CoinGecko). More on the Ethereum page.

Solana (−6.5%). SOL dipped as low as $100.43. The network's big event is ahead: Anza has scheduled the switch to the Alpenglow consensus for Oct. 21, cutting finality to roughly 150 ms (Anza on X, our coverage).

Starknet (−50.9%). STRK gave back its entire recent rally. The run-up began after a proposal to turn Starknet from an Ethereum layer 2 into a standalone layer 1; by Oct. 13 active addresses were 63% below their peak, and a monthly unlock of 127M STRK added selling pressure, per a CoinMarketCap summary. A seven-day, non-binding community vote on moving to its own layer 1 has been running since Oct. 15.

Monero (+10.8%). XMR was the best performer in the top 100 over 7 days as of Monday morning, per CoinMarketCap. Fellow privacy coin ZEC went the other way, down 11.4%, in a week when hackers from several breaches were found routing stolen funds through Zcash.

Regulation and events

White House. Patrick Witt left his post as head of the President's Council of Advisers on Digital Assets, and no successor was named (The Block, our coverage).
SEC approved Cboe binary options on Coinbase and MARA financial metrics (Federal Register, our coverage). VanEck withdrew its filing for a Lido staked-ether ETF (our coverage).
EU. The European Banking Authority classified USDC as a significant stablecoin under MiCA (our coverage), and Qivalis, a consortium of 37 banks, received a license for a euro stablecoin (our coverage).
Bitget is ending service for users in Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan (Cointelegraph, our coverage).
South Korea is blocking the websites of 27 offshore crypto exchanges, including KuCoin and MEXC (our coverage).
Courts and police. HEX founder Richard Heart was detained in Istanbul (our coverage); a U.S. court refused to let the CFTC and Gemini undo their $5M settlement (our coverage); Crypto.com and Novig sued Missouri over sports event contracts (our coverage).
Security. Nine firms launched the Quantum Alliance, estimating that 6.4M BTC sit in addresses with exposed public keys (CoinDesk); hackers breached the Korean exchanges Gopax and Pravang (our coverage).

Calendar for the new week

Tuesday, Oct. 20: U.S. housing starts; Netflix earnings after the close.
Wednesday, Oct. 21: Solana switches to Alpenglow around 10:50 AM ET; Tesla and Meta report after the close (Gotrade).
Thursday, Oct. 22: U.S. initial jobless claims; Starknet's seven-day community vote should wrap up around this date.
Friday, Oct. 23: University of Michigan consumer sentiment; XRP Ledger upgrade with eight fixes (our coverage); weekly ETF flow totals.
All week: the Fed's blackout period runs through Oct. 29, so no FOMC speeches.
Further out: FOMC meeting Oct. 27⁠–⁠28, Deribit monthly expiry Oct. 30 (149,066 BTC of open interest, max pain $78,000), difficulty adjustment around Oct. 30, Binance Pool shutdown Nov. 10, MSCI list Nov. 11.

Bottom line

The week showed that the market buys at $80,000 but isn't willing to pay above $84,000 until ETFs return to inflows. The inflation data has been absorbed: markets saw the worst for rates on Wednesday and Thursday, and Warsh's remarks sharply cut the odds of an October hike. Leverage has been cleared out by two liquidation waves, and funding is calm.

The base case for the week is sideways trading in an $80,000⁠–⁠$84,400 range, with a light macro calendar and a silent Fed. A breakout to the upside would need ETF flows to turn; downside risk could come from weak earnings at big tech names (Tesla, Meta) and further selling in the Nasdaq. Toward month-end, the FOMC meeting and the options expiry, with max pain at $78,000, will start to weigh on price.

This is not investment advice.