Crypto market brief · 2026-10-20

Stablecoins lose $6.7B in a week

The stablecoin supply lost more in one week than across the whole month. In the week to Oct 19 the float of dollar tokens fell by $6.7B, against a 30 day change of -$5.4B, leaving $304.60B in circulation.

On the rates side, the Fed funds rate stood at 3.88% and the 10 year Treasury yield at 5.09%, so long dated US debt paid more than the Fed's policy rate. The Fed balance sheet was $6.76T and the reverse repo facility, where money funds park overnight cash at the Fed, held $300.0M.

Since 2017, days in this very high band saw a median +0.0% BTC move over the next 7d (n=642, base +0.4%, 8y of records). History, not a forecast.

Source: ByKaranteli, https://bykaranteli.com/brief/2026-10-20#2026-10-20-0940-macro-weekly, data as of 2026-10-19 00:20 UTC

Lopsided Bitcoin trading clashes with greed

Bitcoin's trading turned lopsided on Oct 20 even as the mood gauge held in greed. Order flow toxicity, a measure of how one sided buying and selling is, read 0.18, the 94th percentile of the past 90 days and above the line our desk flags. Fear and Greed sits at 55.

$BTC trades at $81,407, -1.72% over 24 hours. US buyers on Coinbase have bid below the global price for 45 straight days, with the gap at -0.12%.

The biggest leverage move came in $ADA, where open interest moved -4.9% with price -2.3% as longs were squeezed out. Across 10 tracked majors, 2 added leverage and 3 saw positions unwind.

Source: ByKaranteli, https://bykaranteli.com/brief/2026-10-20#2026-10-20-0900-daily-brief, data as of 2026-10-20 09:00 UTC

US buyers pay under global price for 45 days

For the 45th straight day in our records, Bitcoin traded cheaper on Coinbase than on global venues. On Oct 19 US buyers paid -0.123% under the rest of the world, the gap traders call the Coinbase premium.

That discount ran slightly shallower than the seven day average of -0.128%. The size of the gap is small. The length of the run is what stands out.

Further out, quarterly $BTC futures were priced at an annualized +5.55% above spot, which is the yearly rate of the extra traders pay to hold Bitcoin exposure until those contracts expire.

Since 2017, days in this very low band saw a median +0.1% BTC move over the next 7d (n=664, base +0.5%, 9y of records). History, not a forecast.

Source: ByKaranteli, https://bykaranteli.com/brief/2026-10-20#2026-10-20-0720-premium-daily, data as of 2026-10-20 07:20 UTC

Miners pushed hashrate up 20.3% in a week

Computing power on the Bitcoin network climbed +20.3% in the 7 days to Oct 19, by our node's count. Hashrate, the total machinery securing the chain, stood at 1151 EH/s that day. Measured over 30 days, the change was +40.7%.

Difficulty, the setting for how hard each block is to find, read 140.58T. Miners took in 480.6 BTC over the day. The fee rate on blocks read 0.0 sat/vB, which means getting a transaction confirmed cost next to nothing.

Since 2017, days in this very high band saw a median +0.1% BTC move over the next 7d (n=640, base +0.5%, 8y of records). History, not a forecast.

Source: ByKaranteli, https://bykaranteli.com/brief/2026-10-20#2026-10-20-0540-network-daily, data as of 2026-10-19 00:20 UTC

Bitcoin longs take a $13.7M flush

A one sided flush just hit Bitcoin. In the last 30 minutes, exchanges across the major venues liquidated $13.7M of leveraged $BTC long positions. These are bets on a higher price that were closed automatically once the margin behind them ran out.

The other side barely felt it. Short positions lost just $13.3K over the same window, so nearly all of the damage fell on buyers using borrowed money.

These figures come from the raw liquidation streams of the major venues.

Source: ByKaranteli, https://bykaranteli.com/brief/2026-10-20#2026-10-20-0137-event-liq-burst, data as of 2026-10-20 01:37 UTC

KuCoin closes USDT withdrawals on TON

KuCoin has closed USDT withdrawals on the TON network. The change showed up on the venue's own currency list in our daily read.

This matters most to anyone holding $USDT on KuCoin who planned to send it out over TON. Deposits and other networks may still be open, so moving funds on a different chain may remain possible.

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

Source: ByKaranteli, https://bykaranteli.com/brief/2026-10-20#2026-10-20-0737-event-venue-event, data as of 2026-10-20 07:37 UTC

Buyers deepen the Bitcoin book as price dips

Buyers hold the heavier side of the $BTC spot book at 09:39 UTC on Oct 20, even with price 1.9% below where it stood a day earlier. Across 21 venues, $183.6M of bids rest within 2% of the $81.4K mid against $159.1M of asks, a 7.2% tilt toward buyers.

Over the 24 hours, bid depth grew 15.2% and ask depth thinned 13.7%, with the mid moving down from $83.0K.

The two biggest walls sit right on top of price, 0.05% either side. That is $39.5M of bids at $81.3K and $41.0M of asks at $81.4K. Resting orders can be pulled at any moment, so this is a snapshot of the book, not a map of where price goes.

Source: ByKaranteli, https://bykaranteli.com/brief/2026-10-20#2026-10-20-0940-orderbook-btc, data as of 2026-10-20 09:39 UTC

Bitcoin put buyers outspent call buyers

Put buyers outspent call buyers in $BTC options over the last 24 hours. Takers paid $4.9M in premium for puts, which gain if price falls, against $1.6M for calls.

Across 12,606 recorded trades, 35% of all premium dollars changed hands as block trades, deals negotiated off the order book and reported to the venue.

The biggest single trade of the past 48 hours was a sale, not a purchase: a $3.3M block of $88,000 calls expiring Mar 26, 2027. Block buyers took $1.3M of $83,000 calls for Nov 6 and $702.1K of $78,000 calls for Mar 26, 2027.

Source: ByKaranteli, https://bykaranteli.com/brief/2026-10-20#2026-10-20-0810-options-flow-daily, data as of 2026-10-20 08:10 UTC

Ether shorts took the hit on a light day

Traders betting on lower prices carried most of the forced closures on Oct 19. Our streams recorded $85.6M of short positions closed out against $49.2M of longs, leaving longs with a 36.5% share of the $134.8M total, across 47,586 events on 11 venues.

Ether led every coin at $44.6M, with $32.7M of that from shorts. Bitcoin followed at $23.2M, also weighted to shorts at $15.5M. The single largest closure of the day was an $ETH position on Binance.

The day came in 40.1% below Oct 18's $225.1M and well under the past week's $352.4M daily average. These totals are a floor from the venues' public streams, not the whole market.

Short sellers bore 57% of stock perp closures

Short sellers on Binance's TradFi perpetuals took the larger hit on Oct 19. Of $19.12M in forced closures, the split ran 43% longs / 57% shorts, with $11.0M of short bets closed against $8.1M of longs.

The total was up 98% from Oct 18's $9.63M, spread across 164 contracts and 5,278 separate closures.

SNDK led at $4.75M, and there longs lost more, $2.67M against $2.09M. The next three leaned the other way: SOXL lost $1.97M on the short side, SK Hynix $1.26M and KORU $1.26M. The biggest single closure was a $348K position on BZ.

Binance charges the most to borrow dollars

Binance was the most expensive of our three venues for borrowing dollars on margin in the Oct 20 read at 05:25 UTC, charging 4.85% a year for USDT. OKX charged the least at 3.5%, and Bybit's 3.92% set the median.

Binance also showed the widest gap between what Bitcoin futures buyers pay and what it costs to borrow the coin. Traders long $BTC perpetuals there paid 10.95% a year in funding to the short side. Borrowing BTC on margin on the same venue cost 0.43% a year.

That recorded gap of 10.52% was the largest across the 15 assets we track.

Option buyers spent more on puts than calls

Option buyers put far more money behind puts than calls in the latest daily read. Premium spent buying puts, contracts that pay off if price falls, came to $4.75M, against $1.55M spent buying calls, which pay off if price rises.

The biggest single trade of the day sat on the call side, and it was a sale. A call with a $88,000 strike expiring Mar 26, 2027 went for $3.27M in premium as a block, a large trade negotiated away from the public order book. Blocks made up 35% of the day's flow.

Premium paid shows where the money went, not the reason behind each trade.

KuCoin reopens USDT withdrawals on TON

The pause on KuCoin's TON route for USDT is over. Withdrawals of $USDT on that network are back on after about 1 hour closed, based on the venue's own currency list in our daily read.

This reaches $USDT holders on KuCoin who send funds out over TON. Transfers that were held back on that route during the closure can go through again.

The reopening covers the TON network for USDT on KuCoin.

OKX and Bybit funds shrank the most

The 10 exchange insurance funds we track ended the 24 hours to Oct 20 smaller, a move of -$42.5M or -0.55% that leaves them holding $7.64B. Over seven days the total is -0.72%.

OKX and Bybit had the biggest drops, each -0.93%. OKX still holds the largest fund at $3.00B, Bybit $1.15B. Binance barely moved at -0.04% on $2.44B, and Delta Exchange was the only fund to grow, at +0.09%.

Together the funds equal 16.24% of perpetual open interest on the coins we follow. A fund is the balance a venue reports, not an audit, and it pays out when liquidations close below the bankruptcy price.

Deribit settles the only dated future of the day

Deribit settled its USDC margined $AVAX future for Oct 20 at $9.472 at 08:00 UTC. It was the only dated futures contract to reach settlement in the 24 hours to 09:15 UTC.

Wednesday, Oct 21 brings a fuller slate. Deribit has 12 dated $BTC futures and 12 dated $ETH futures expiring, plus one contract each in AVAX, HYPE and SOL. Bullish carries the nearest expiry on the list, a single dated Bitcoin future on the same day.

Over the next 7 days, 107 dated futures expire across 11 venues, alongside 7,472 option contracts.

Ether took the day's largest whale trade

Ether, not Bitcoin, produced the largest single whale trade in the 24 hours to 10:00 UTC on Oct 20, a $16.3M order.

Bitcoin still carried the most large trade money of any coin, with Ether second and Solana a distant third. Across 6,104 big trades, sellers moved $5.83B against $5.61B from buyers.

That left buyers with 49% of the flow, inside the 45% to 55% range we treat as two sided. Sellers held a slight edge, but neither side ran the whale flow.

Liquidation risk splits evenly around Bitcoin

Neither side of the Bitcoin market held the heavier modeled liquidation risk near the price at 11:00 UTC on Oct 20. With $BTC at $81,527, the estimated map came out two sided within 3% of the price.

The closest modeled levels sit tight on both flanks. Above, short sellers start getting forced to buy back at $81,763. Below, leveraged longs start getting forced out at $81,193.

Further out, the largest estimated clusters are at $84,708 for shorts and $79,103 for longs. These are modeled from open positions and leverage, not recorded liquidations.