Crypto market brief · 2026-10-12

Stablecoin cash starts moving at low stress

Stablecoin liquidity on our hourly record shifted into its collapse state at 07:00 UTC on Oct 12. Collapse means stored up liquidity being released under low stress, the milder of the model's two alarm states. The Psi score reads 76 on its 0 to 100 scale.

This state is common. In 2026 we have counted 449 hours in it. Bitcoin closed higher 24 hours later after 54% of them, with an average move of 0.3%. In 2025 there were 416 such hours, 62% of them followed by a higher close and an average move of 0.75%.

Those are measured past outcomes, not a forecast, and the state is not a trade signal.

Source: ByKaranteli, https://bykaranteli.com/brief/2026-10-12#2026-10-12-1235-psi-alert, data as of 2026-10-12 12:35 UTC

Bybit closes Bitcoin withdrawals on BTC network

Sending Bitcoin off Bybit over its own chain just stopped working. The venue has closed $BTC withdrawals on the BTC network, as recorded from its own currency list in our daily read.

Anyone holding Bitcoin on Bybit who planned to move it to a wallet or another exchange that way has to wait until the route reopens. Deposits, and withdrawals over other networks, may still be open.

A closed withdrawal route is the earliest public sign a venue gives when something is wrong, though most pauses turn out to be routine maintenance.

Source: ByKaranteli, https://bykaranteli.com/brief/2026-10-12#2026-10-12-0637-event-venue-event, data as of 2026-10-12 06:37 UTC

Currency bets rank among Solana's top perps

Two of the five largest single markets on Solana's perpetual venues on Oct 12 weren't crypto at all. GM Trade's US dollar against Canadian dollar contract held $16.4M of open interest, and its dollar against Swiss franc pair held $13.8M. Traders on both paid close to nothing in hourly funding.

Only three coin markets were bigger. Jupiter Perps' $SOL market held $29.0M, and Pacifica's $BTC and $ETH markets held $24.6M and $17.5M.

GM Trade carries 43.7% of the $242.8M total across six venues, and its book is almost evenly split, with $105.8M long against $106.5M short. Jupiter Perps is far more one sided, with $68.5M long against $17.2M short.

Source: ByKaranteli, https://bykaranteli.com/brief/2026-10-12#2026-10-12-2235-solana-perps-daily, data as of 2026-10-12 22:35 UTC

Shorts use 64% of Jupiter's short side pool

Jupiter's liquidity pool has 63.96% of its short side capacity in use, even though shorts are the smaller crowd on the Solana based perps venue. Long bets total $68.5M against $17.2M in shorts across SOL, ETH and BTC as of Oct 12, an 80% long share.

The long side has far more room. Solana longs use 11.21% of what the pool can lend them, Bitcoin longs 13.71% and Ether longs 5.49%.

JLP, the pool behind those trades, holds $886.6M and pays its providers an 8% annual rate.

Source: ByKaranteli, https://bykaranteli.com/brief/2026-10-12#2026-10-12-2220-jupiter-daily, data as of 2026-10-12 22:20 UTC

Longs made up most of $255.0M liquidated

Leveraged longs made up most of the $255.0M liquidated in the 24 hours to Oct 12. $188.4M of long positions were forcibly closed, against $66.6M of shorts, across 77,502 events. Ether led at $51.5M, and the largest single liquidation was $3.3M on $ZEC.

Perpetual open interest across 27 venues stood at $73.78B, -0.95% against 24 hours earlier, with 15.42% of it on decentralized venues.

Hyperliquid's largest accounts by equity hold 41.8% of their notional long. The biggest resting $BTC order band is a $54.4M bid at $82.9K, 0.25% below mid. US spot ETFs on Oct 9 netted $21.1M for Bitcoin and -$56.1M for Ether.

Source: ByKaranteli, https://bykaranteli.com/brief/2026-10-12#2026-10-12-2100-data-wrap, data as of 2026-10-12 21:00 UTC

DEX trading in tokenized stocks jumps

DEX trading in tokenized stocks came to $261.2M in the 24 hours to Oct 12, +158.26% against the prior day. These tokens each follow one listed share that a custodian holds.

The supply onchain is worth $3.43B at the share price, -1.58% since the last recorded day. Ondo Stocks is the largest issuer, with $1.03B.

Across 200 wrappers checked on Oct 12, the median traded -0.09% against the real share. The widest premium was TQQQx Solana +2.89% and the widest discount RDDT Solana -1.88%.

Source: ByKaranteli, https://bykaranteli.com/brief/2026-10-12#2026-10-12-2045-tokenized-daily, data as of 2026-10-12 20:45 UTC

Every theme basket closed higher on the day

Every one of our eight theme baskets closed higher in the 24 hours to Oct 12. The smallest gain came from the theme leading the month. Quantum added only +0.59%, and Layer 2 topped the day at +6.50%, with RWA at 5.22% and DePIN at 5.02% behind it.

Over 30 days all eight themes have done better than Bitcoin's 8.5%. Quantum is up 75.4%, 67 percentage points ahead, and Layer 2 is up 66.8%, 58.3 points ahead. Meme sits closest to Bitcoin, up 13.3% and 4.8 points in front.

Each theme is an equal weight basket of Binance spot pairs, rebased to Jan 1, 2025.

Source: ByKaranteli, https://bykaranteli.com/brief/2026-10-12#2026-10-12-2040-themes-daily, data as of 2026-10-12 20:40 UTC

Investors keep most crypto money in Bitcoin

On Oct 12, more crypto money sat in Bitcoin than in every other coin combined. $BTC holds 59.1% of a market valued at $2.81T, measured by dominance, a coin's share of total crypto market value.

Ether is a distant second at 10.94%. Everything from large caps down to small tokens shares what the two leaders leave behind.

There is no 24 hour comparison for this reading. It shows where the money sits on Oct 12, not which way it is moving.

Source: ByKaranteli, https://bykaranteli.com/brief/2026-10-12#2026-10-12-2000-dominance-watch, data as of 2026-10-12 20:00 UTC

US buyers paid below global price for 37 days

Coinbase priced $BTC below global exchanges for a 37th day in a row on Oct 11. The gap was -0.113%, so US buyers were paying less than the rest of the world for the same coin.

The 7 day average was -0.069%, which puts the Oct 11 reading deeper than the week's typical discount. The length of the run matters more here than the size of the gap.

On the futures side, quarterly contracts were priced at an annualized +5.32% above spot. That is the yearly rate traders pay to hold Bitcoin exposure through the quarterly contract instead of buying the coin outright.

DFDVx buyers pay +3.35% over the stock

Holders of DFDVx on Solana are paying more than the stock is worth on its home market. The token, a wrapper that tracks DFDV shares, trades at a premium of +3.35% over the underlying share price.

The premium measures the token's price against the stock it represents. A positive reading means on chain buyers pay up for the wrapper, while a negative one would mean it trades at a discount to the share.

The gap describes what the token costs against the stock. It does not show which way either price moves next.

Bitcoin option buyers split evenly on direction

Bitcoin option buyers didn't pick a side over the past 24 hours. They paid $2.4M in premium for calls, which gain if price rises, and the same $2.4M for puts, which pay if it falls.

The largest single trade of the past 48 hours was a $380.5K buy of $65,000 calls expiring Oct 30. Next came two longer dated positions on the Mar 26, 2027 expiry, $352.2K for $90,000 calls and $290.0K for $80,000 puts. All three went through as block trades, negotiated privately off the order book.

Blocks made up 19% of all premium traded, across 11,950 recorded trades.

US buyers bid under global price for day 37

US buyers have now bid Bitcoin under the rest of the world for 37 straight days. The Coinbase premium, the gap between the US price and the global price, reads -0.11% on Oct 12, with $BTC at $83,469 and the Fear and Greed index at 69, in greed.

Our liquidity stress gauge sits in its collapse state with a score of 83 out of 100. Order flow toxicity, a measure of how one sided trading is, reads 0.14, the 65th percentile of the last 90 days.

The largest leverage move came in $AVAX, where open interest rose 7.9% as price gained 6.5%. Across 10 tracked majors, 2 are adding leverage and 1 is seeing positions squeezed out.

Deribit Bitcoin and Ether futures expire Oct 13

Deribit closes out 13 dated $BTC futures and 13 dated $ETH futures on Oct 13, plus one contract each in $SOL, Avax and Hype. Bullish also has one Bitcoin delivery contract ending that day, the nearest expiry on the calendar.

Dated futures have a fixed end date and settle at a set price when it arrives. In the 24 hours to 09:15 UTC on Oct 12, one such settlement was recorded: a Deribit Avax contract that closed out at $11.011 at 08:00 UTC.

Across the next 7 days, 134 dated futures contracts expire on 11 venues, alongside 7,340 option contracts.

Exchange insurance funds grew a net +0.31%

Exchange insurance funds, the money venues keep to pay for liquidations that close below the bankruptcy price, totaled $7.70B across the 10 venues we cover on Oct 12. That is a net +0.31% over 24 hours, or +$23.7M, and the 7 day change reads -1.03%.

OKX holds the largest fund at $3.05B and also moved most, +0.52%. Bybit followed at +0.51%. Not every fund grew. Bitfinex changed -0.01% and dYdX held at 0.00%.

Together the funds equal 15.89% of the open positions in perpetual futures on the coins we track. These are balances the venues report, not audits.

Longs took most of $2.03B liquidated this week

Leveraged longs took most of the pain from Oct 5 to Oct 12. We recorded $2.03B of liquidations in 542,227 events, $1.57B of it from bets on a rise and $463.3M from bets on a fall. $ETH led every coin at $543.4M.

Open positions across 27 venues ended the week at $75.46B, a -4.79% change. US spot Bitcoin ETFs saw -$681.1M net over the last five settled days, Ether ETFs -$542.1M. Hyperliquid's top 300 whales finish the week 42.6% long.

Also in the free datasets are 54,331 trades of $1M or more worth $97.13B, the largest $36.4M on $BTC, and 2,016 order book snapshots from 29 venues.

Sellers stacked more orders in Bitcoin's book

Sellers held the deeper side of the $BTC spot book at 09:35 UTC on Oct 12. Within 2% of the $83.4K mid, asks came to $168.3M against $145.9M in bids across 21 venues, a -7.1% imbalance against the buyers.

Compared with 24 hours earlier, bid depth in that range is 18.6% thinner and ask depth is 12.4% larger, with the mid 0.5% above the $83.0K it read a day before.

The biggest orders sit right next to the price. The largest bid wall is at $83.4K, 0.05% below mid, holding $37.7M. The largest ask wall is at $83.5K, 0.05% above, holding $42.0M. Resting orders can be pulled at any time, so this is a snapshot of where money was waiting.

Whales split almost evenly on both sides

Large traders didn't pick a side in the 24 hours to Oct 12. Big orders bought $6.03B and sold $5.59B, leaving buyers with 51.9% of the flow. That lands inside the two sided range, with no camp in control.

Across 6,535 large trades, Bitcoin carried the most money at $6.34B over 3,349 trades. Ether came next with $4.48B over 2,617 trades.

The heaviest single order of the day was also in $BTC, at $27.0M.

Traders kept adding leverage as Bitcoin fell

Leverage kept building through a losing week. In the 7 days to Oct 12, Bitcoin fell 2.9%, yet all 10 of the large coins we track saw open interest (the total value of open futures bets) grow. $AVAX open interest was up 8.2%. Forced liquidations recorded this week came to $2.0B.

US buyers stayed below the rest of the world. The Coinbase premium, the gap between the US price and the global price, was negative on all 7 days and averaged -0.069%. That makes 37 straight days of US bids below the global price.

In $BTC options, buyers paid $52.6M for calls and $31.5M for puts. The largest single trade was a sale of the $74,000 put expiring March 26, 2027, for $565,120 in premium. Bitcoin implied volatility was 37.4, against 36.5 a week earlier.

Bitcoin longs carry more of the nearby risk

Within 3% of Bitcoin's $83,471 price on Oct 12, the estimated liquidation map leans toward leveraged longs. More of the modeled exposure sits below the price than above it.

Below, the nearest modeled long liquidations start at $83,151, and the largest cluster sits at $80,813. A drop to those levels would force those longs out of their positions.

Above, the nearest modeled short liquidations sit at $83,930, with the largest cluster at $86,657, where short sellers would have to buy back.

Avalanche leads the day's futures build

Avalanche led the build in futures positions among the large coins in the 24 hours to Oct 12, 11:35 UTC. Open interest, the total value of open futures bets, grew 7.06% and $AVAX gained 5.8%.

Funding, the fee one side pays the other to keep a position open, sat barely above zero. The new money came in without longs having to pay up for it.

$DOGE and $LTC were the two coins where longs were building, with open interest up 4.26% and 3.85%. Bitcoin added 2.16% in open interest on a price move of only 0.28%.

Bybit lists five new perpetuals in one batch

Bybit did most of the listing in the 24 hours to 12:30 UTC on Oct 12. Five perpetual contracts, futures with no expiry date, appeared there together at 10:52 UTC: MELI, NUSTOCK, PBR, VIST and YPF, all settled against USDT.

Binance added ZCSH and MSTU at 09:52 UTC. Gate.io brought the latest one, BATON, first seen at 11:52 UTC, and it tops today's list.

In total, 14 new contracts went live across the six exchanges we track over the window.

SKHYc buyers pay +8.39% over the share

On Base, the SKHYc token changes hands at +8.39% above the $SKHY share it tracks. Buyers of the wrapper are paying that much extra to hold the same exposure on chain instead of through the stock itself.

The premium compares the token's price with the price of the underlying share. It says nothing about which way the stock is heading. It only measures the gap between two prices for the same claim.

At +8.39%, anyone holding SKHYc carries that gap as well as the stock's own moves. Their position depends on both the share price and how far the wrapper trades from it.

Bitcoin trades back inside yesterday's range

Bitcoin closed the Oct 11 session at $83,723.00, above the range where it spent most of the day. By 12:44 UTC on Oct 12 it was back inside that range at $82,829.50, ahead of the US open.

On Oct 11, 70% of trading time in $BTC perpetuals sat between $82,733.65 and $83,687.47, the value area. The most traded price of the session was $83,003.21.

Ether spent its session centred on $2,504.27, with its value area running from $2,496.13 to $2,534.96. $ETH traded at $2,534.30, inside that range and close to its upper edge.

Leveraged Ether buyers carry the nearby risk

Leveraged buyers carry the heavier share of estimated liquidation exposure near the Ether price on Oct 12. Within 3% of $ETH at $2,531, the modeled map leans to the downside.

The nearest estimated long levels start at $2,517, with a larger cluster at $2,452. Those are the prices where traders holding leveraged longs would be closed out.

On the other side, short sellers would be forced to buy back from $2,564, and the biggest modeled short cluster sits at $2,632.

Chainlink's book costs the most to trade

Trading $1.0M at market in Chainlink cost the most of the eight order books we track on Oct 12, an estimated 23.4 bps of slippage. Bitcoin took the same order for 0.2 bps.

Cardano was the next thinnest at 18.6 bps, followed by Dogecoin at 10.8 bps and BNB at 6.6 bps. Among the deep books, Ether came in at 0.9 bps, Solana at 3 bps and XRP at 4.1 bps.

On books as thin as $LINK and $ADA, every large market order moves price further per dollar traded. That includes forced liquidations, whichever side they hit.

Buyers outweigh sellers in Ether's books

Across 21 spot venues at 13:58 UTC on Oct 12, Ether's order books leaned harder toward buyers than Bitcoin's. Within 2% of the price, $ETH had $93.7M of bids resting against $76.4M of asks, a 10.2% tilt to the buy side.

$BTC leaned the same way but less, with $174.4M of bids and $152.8M of asks, a 6.6% tilt.

The largest single walls sat almost on top of the price. In Bitcoin, buyers had $37.2M waiting at $82,828 and sellers $38.0M at $82,910. In Ether, the bid wall held $14.9M at $2,537 and the ask wall $16.1M at $2,542.

This is resting size, not trades, and orders like these can be pulled before they fill.

Open bets in MAGIC shrink 18.83% in a day

$MAGIC tops the Oct 12 pressure board at 15:00 UTC with a score of 63, and its open positions shrank 18.83% over 24 hours. Funding sat at -0.02%, meaning traders betting against it paid longs a small fee to hold.

Positions closing while the rate stays close to flat is what deleveraging looks like. That drop counts every position, long or short.

The steepest cost on the list sits in $GTC. Funding there reached -2% as open interest grew 57.91%, so positions piled in while shorts paid the highest rate on the board. $CKB also drew new bets, up 9.36%, with funding at -0.1%.

Turkey pays a little less for Bitcoin

Turkey priced Bitcoin a touch under the world on Oct 12. Bought with lira at the official USD/TRY rate, $BTC traded at -0.18%, or -17.8 bps, against the global dollar price. Our score reads 43 / 100, a neutral regime.

The discount sits mostly in the dollar, not in Bitcoin. Tether in lira traded -15.6 bps below the official rate, and the crypto leg, Bitcoin priced in Tether locally against the world, added only -2.2 bps.

OKX TR was the dearest venue at -8.5 bps and Binance TR the cheapest at -19.4 bps. The 24 hour average was -9.8 bps and the 7 day average +1.7 bps. This is a price gap, not a trade anyone can lock in.

Bids thicken under Ether's spot price

Bids outweigh asks in Ether's spot book as of 15:35 UTC on Oct 12. Across 21 spot venues, $100.07M of bids rest within 2% of the $2,530.84 mid against $86.38M of asks, a 7.3% tilt toward the bid side.

The heaviest walls sit close to the price. A $20.20M ask wall rests at $2,534.63, 0.15% above mid, and an $18.56M bid wall waits at $2,524.51, 0.25% below.

Against 24 hours earlier, bid depth within 2% is up 17.9% and ask depth is down 3.2%, with the mid 0.2% higher. Resting orders can be pulled at any moment, so this is a snapshot of the book, not a forecast.

WIF longs pay the steepest rate on XT

Holding a Dogwifhat long cost the most on XT in the Oct 12 reading at 15:52 UTC. On that venue $WIF longs paid 0.12% more every 8 hours than on Kraken, the cheapest venue in the comparison.

If that gap held for a full year, it would annualize to an estimated 125.35% after taker fees on both legs. That figure is a model of the carry, not a recorded or realized return.

$XRP had the next widest gap, 0.11% per 8 hours between Hyperliquid and Apex, modeled at 105.43%. XT charged longs the highest rate on three of the four coins listed, including $DOGE and Avalanche.

Sellers outran buyers, yet the crowd leans long

Aggressive selling outweighed aggressive buying in Bitcoin over the 24 hours to Oct 12. Orders that sold straight into the book beat orders that bought straight from it by -4,649 BTC.

Positioning still tilts the other way. On Binance, 1.47 accounts hold Bitcoin longs for every one short, and the largest traders hold 1.55 times as much in long positions as in shorts. OKX shows a similar lean at 1.49.

Ether carries the most one sided crowd of the 30 coins we track, with 2.69 Binance accounts long for each one short in $ETH.

IBM token trades below its own stock

A tokenized version of IBM on Solana is changing hands for less than the stock it represents. The token's price sits at a gap of -9.21% against the $IBM share it tracks.

That figure compares the token's price on chain with the price of the underlying share. A negative reading means holders selling the token accept less than the share itself would fetch.

The gap measures price only. It does not show which side, the token or the stock, moves to close it, or whether it closes at all.

Most altcoins outran Bitcoin over 90 days

Thirty eight of the 49 altcoins we sample finished the last 90 days ahead of Bitcoin, and they cleared a real bar, with $BTC up 27.2% over the same stretch. The Altcoin Season Index reads 78 on Oct 12, inside altseason, the zone that starts at 75.

The index is 1 point higher than seven days ago. The spread from top to bottom is wide. BTW returned 30x over 90 days and GTC +312.6%, while the US token is at -57.1%.

Being positive was not enough to count. $DOGE, among the five weakest, returned +14.4% and still trailed Bitcoin's 27.2%.

Trader mood climbs 8 points into greed

Crypto traders got 8 points more optimistic in a single day. The Fear and Greed index, a gauge of trader mood, read 69 on Oct 12, inside the Greed zone.

More dollar tokens arrived on chain over the same 24 hours. Stablecoin supply, the cash parked and ready to trade, reached $313.00B, up 0.29%.

$BTC accounted for 59.07% of the total crypto market's value on Oct 12.