# Daily Crypto Market Brief Daily crypto brief from ByKaranteli's own recorded data: liquidity state, Coinbase Premium, order flow, options, liquidations and ETF flows. Every 30 min. Source: https://bykaranteli.com/brief · attribute to ByKaranteli and quote the timestamp. Snapshot taken 2026-10-18. Auto-generated from ByKaranteli's own recorded data · liquidity, flow, options, liquidations, ETF flows. Refreshed every 30 minutes. ## Today: Crypto market brief · 2026-10-18 BTC -0.54% over 24h. Liquidity state: SUPERPOSITION (93). US traders have bid below the global price for 43 straight days. Fear & Greed 53 (neutral). ### Market pulse Where the market stands right now: price, dominance, sentiment, and sideline capital. - BTC $81122 · -0.54% in 24h - BTC dominance 60.08% · total market cap $2.7T - Fear & Greed: 53 (Neutral) - Retail Euphoria Index: 58 (OPTIMISTIC) - Stablecoin supply: $306.2B · +$37.4M 24h ### Liquidity & stress ByKaranteli's own liquidity-state model plus the gap between US-regulated and global pricing. - PsiCharge state: SUPERPOSITION · score 93/100 - In this state over the last 12 months (3516 readings), BTC averaged -0.10% over the next 24h and closed higher 52% of the time - Coinbase Premium -0.14%: US bids below global price, day 43 of the streak ### Flow & positioning Order-flow toxicity and where leveraged open interest moved in the last 24 hours. - BTC order-flow toxicity (VPIN) 0.15, 77th percentile of 90 days - Biggest OI move: AVAXUSDT open interest -6.4% with price -3.5% (long squeeze) - Across 10 tracked majors: 2 adding leverage, 2 squeezing out - Top-30 perp positioning: 11 symbols long crowded, 19 in short ramp ### Whales, positioning and stock perps What the largest Hyperliquid accounts hold, how Binance accounts are positioned, the stock and commodity perps, and the Korea and Turkey premium. - Hyperliquid whales (top 1000 accounts by equity): $2.7B long vs $3.4B short, 45% long - BTC whale book: 44% long on $1.7B of open positions - BTC on Binance: long/short accounts 1.73, top-trader positions 1.74, taker buy/sell 0.70 (1h) - Stock and commodity perps: 220 contracts, $4.9B open interest; largest XAUUSDT ($545.0M), most liquidated SOXLUSDT ($12.3M in 24h) - Kimchi premium (Upbit BTC) +1.470%, Turkey premium (BtcTurk BTC) -0.030% ### Options desk Implied volatility and what the tape actually paid for in the last 24 hours. - BTC implied volatility (DVOL): 37.9 - 24h taker premium: $808129 into calls vs $1.4M into puts - Largest print: sell BTC-27NOV26-90000-C · $571663 premium - Put/call OI ratio 0.60 · call wall at $95000, put wall at $60000 ### Liquidations Forced liquidations recorded across our exchange feeds in the last 24 hours. - 24h wipeouts: $218.6M longs vs $57.8M shorts across 91,524 events - Largest single liquidation: SOXSUSDT $7.3M - 1 cascade event detected in 24h, largest $166.6M ### ETF flows US spot ETF net flows, last finalized trading day. - BTC ETFs $82.4M on 2026-10-16 · day 1 of the outflow streak - ETH ETFs $69.7M on 2026-10-16 · day 3 of the outflow streak ### Calendar What is scheduled, and what similar days have actually done to price. - FOMC statement · October 27-28, 2026 in 10 days - Fed days move BTC 2.5x a normal half hour (17 meetings measured) - CFTC week of 2026-10-13: hedge funds net -5,844 BTC futures contracts (+1,008 WoW) ### Desk highlights The notes the desk scored highest this day, in full. #### 12:40 UTC · US buyers pay less for a 43rd day A 43rd straight day of US buyers paying less. $BTC on Coinbase traded below the price on the rest of the market again, with a gap of -0.138% in today's reading. That gap is the Coinbase premium, the difference between Coinbase's Bitcoin price and the global price. Today's reading sits under the 7 day average of -0.127%, a slightly wider discount than the past week's norm. The premium shows where US spot buyers price Bitcoin against everyone else. On its own it is not a reading of where price goes next. Board: /data · Permalink: /brief/2026-10-18#2026-10-18-1240-data-spotlight #### 07:40 UTC · Coinbase discount on Bitcoin reaches 43 days Bitcoin has traded cheaper on Coinbase than on the rest of the market for 43 days in a row. The gap reads -0.138% today, against a 7 day average of -0.127%. The premium is the price difference between Coinbase's Bitcoin market and the global price. Today's gap sits a touch deeper than the past week's average, and every day of that week stayed on the discount side. The figure records a price gap between venues, not the direction of the market, so a discount on its own does not tell you where $BTC trades next. Board: /data · Permalink: /brief/2026-10-18#2026-10-18-0740-data-spotlight #### 15:20 UTC · Turkish buyers keep paying below the world Turkey has now bought Bitcoin below the global price for 8 straight days, out of 32 days in our records. On Oct 18 the Turkey Premium Index read -0.09% (-8.7 bps). The dollar side did most of the work. Tether traded at -7.0 bps against the official USD/TRY rate, which was last set on Oct 16, and the coin itself added -1.7 bps. The 24 hour average was -10.8 bps and the 7 day average -12.1 bps. Across the 5 exchanges in the index, BtcTurk was the dearest at -3.7 bps and CoinTR the cheapest at -10.6 bps. This is a price gap, not a trade anyone can lock in. Board: /turkey-premium · Permalink: /brief/2026-10-18#2026-10-18-1520-turkey-daily #### 09:00 UTC · Lopsided trading runs under a flat Bitcoin Bitcoin's price barely moved in the 24 hours to Oct 18, but the trading underneath it was lopsided. Order flow toxicity, a gauge of how one sided buying and selling is, read 0.17. That puts it in the 93rd percentile of the past 90 days and above the line our desk flags. $BTC traded at $81,706, up 0.03%, holding 59.52% of a $2.8T market. Fear & Greed read 53, neutral. Coinbase buyers bid below the global price for a 43rd straight day, at a -0.14% premium. None of the 10 majors we track added leverage, and $LTC open bets moved -2.6% with price at -0.5% as longs were forced out. Board: /brief · Permalink: /brief/2026-10-18#2026-10-18-0900-daily-brief #### 08:10 UTC · Put buyers outspent call buyers on Bitcoin Bitcoin options buyers leaned toward protection over the last 24 hours. Takers spent $760.1K on puts, which pay off if price falls, against $443.5K on calls. The largest single trades of the past 48 hours were all call sales, each negotiated as a block. Sellers collected $571.7K and $476.8K for $90,000 calls expiring Nov 27, and $343.8K for $75,000 calls expiring Oct 30. Across 9,236 recorded trades, 23% of premium dollars changed hands as blocks, arranged off the order book and reported to the venue. Board: /options-flow · Permalink: /brief/2026-10-18#2026-10-18-0810-options-flow-daily #### 07:20 UTC · US buyers stay below global price 43 days Coinbase priced Bitcoin below the rest of the world for a 43rd day in a row on Oct 17. US buyers closed the day paying -0.138% under the global price, the gap traders call the Coinbase premium. That discount ran a little deeper than the past week's average of -0.127%. The size is small. What stands out is the length, with no day back on the paying side since the streak began. In futures, quarterly $BTC contracts traded at an annualized +5.40% over spot, the extra cost of holding Bitcoin exposure through a dated contract instead of the coin itself. Board: /premium · Permalink: /brief/2026-10-18#2026-10-18-0720-premium-daily #### 05:40 UTC · Miners pulled back hashrate over the week Miners ran less machinery on Bitcoin in the week to Oct 17. Our node counted 962 EH/s of hashrate, the total computing power securing the network, a -5.8% change against 7 days earlier. Measured over 30 days, it is still +8.1%. Mining difficulty, the setting for how hard each block is to find, was 140.58T. Block space cost 2.0 sat/vB, the fee per unit of transaction data, and miners took in 462.0 BTC in revenue on the day. Board: /network · Permalink: /brief/2026-10-18#2026-10-18-0540-network-daily #### 15:00 UTC · Sandbox shorts pay up to stay in Sandbox shorts are paying the most to stay in on our pressure board as of 15:00 UTC on Oct 18. Open futures bets on $SAND grew 16.49% over 24 hours, with funding at -0.44%, meaning sellers pay buyers a fee to keep their positions. New money arriving with funding this one sided is crowding on the short side. The rest of the board leans short too. $TIA and SNDK share the top score of 35, but bets on $TIA shrank 11.61% with funding at 0%, which is positions closing rather than building. AVA is the only symbol flagged long, with open bets up 84.68%. Board: /pressure · Permalink: /brief/2026-10-18#2026-10-18-1500-pressure-snapshot ### Desk log The rest of the day's notes, in order of publication. #### 00:35 UTC · A $1.9M leveraged long forced out on Binance Bitcoin spent the 24 hours to Oct 18 going almost nowhere, and a leveraged buyer on Binance still got forced out. The biggest closure of the window was a long liquidation of $1.9M on Binance, which is the size of the position closed, not the trader's loss. $BTC ended the window -0.20% at $81,413. Our collectors caught 715 recorded prints of $1K or more across the day. The heatmap behind the candles is an estimate of where leveraged positions sit. The prints on the candles are closures we recorded. Board: /chart?s=BTCUSDT&p=1h&heat=1&pr=1&lv=1 · Permalink: /brief/2026-10-18#2026-10-18-0035-chart-daily #### 01:10 UTC · Ether longs took the day's heaviest losses Traders betting on higher Ether prices took the hardest hit on Oct 17. Our streams recorded $42.7M of leveraged $ETH longs forced out, against $5.0M on the short side, the largest total of any coin. Across 11 venues and 910 symbols, $249.1M was closed out in 80,555 events. Longs carried $192.2M of it, or 77.2%, with $56.8M from shorts. $BTC came next at $18.6M, and the single largest closure was a SOXS position on Binance. The day ran 2% above the $244.2M of Oct 16 and stayed under the 7 day average of $312.8M. These totals are a floor drawn from the venues' public streams. Board: /liquidations · Permalink: /brief/2026-10-18#2026-10-18-0110-liquidations-daily #### 03:10 UTC · Stock perp liquidations jump 68% in a day Forced closures on Binance's TradFi perpetuals reached $85.08M on Oct 17, up 68% from $50.65M the day before. Leveraged longs made up 74% of the total, $63.1M against $22.0M for shorts, spread over 218 contracts and 13,519 separate closures. SOXL led with $12.20M, $8.25M of it on the long side. SNDK followed at $10.62M, nearly all longs at $10.31M. The single largest closure, $7.27M, hit SOXS, where $9.08M of short positions were closed in all. Crude oil ($CL) saw $5.52M of shorts closed out. Board: /tradfi · Permalink: /brief/2026-10-18#2026-10-18-0310-tradfi-liquidations-daily #### 06:20 UTC · OKX lends dollars cheapest at 3.5% OKX charged the least of the three venues we track to borrow dollars on margin in the 05:25 UTC read on Oct 18, at 3.5% a year for USDT. Binance charged the most at 4.71%, and Bybit's 3.92% matched the median. Dogecoin showed the widest gap across 15 assets. On OKX, traders long $DOGE perpetuals paid 10.95% a year in funding, a fee that goes to the short side. Borrowing DOGE on the same venue cost 1% a year. That left a recorded 9.95% spread between the two rates, the largest on the board in this read. Board: /borrow · Permalink: /brief/2026-10-18#2026-10-18-0620-borrow-daily #### 09:20 UTC · Only one dated future settles, on Deribit Only one dated futures contract reached settlement in the 24 hours to 09:15 UTC on Oct 18. Deribit closed out its USDC margined $AVAX contract for Oct 18 at $9.769 at 08:00 UTC, and no other venue settled a dated future in that window. Monday, Oct 19, carries a fuller slate. Deribit has 13 dated $BTC contracts and 13 dated $ETH contracts expiring, plus one each on AVAX and HYPE. Bullish has one Bitcoin delivery contract and Coinbase one CDEOIL contract on the same day. Across the next 7 days, 134 dated futures expire on 11 venues, alongside 7,584 option contracts. Board: /settlements · Permalink: /brief/2026-10-18#2026-10-18-0920-settlements-daily #### 09:20 UTC · OKX fund leads at 60.47% of its open interest OKX's insurance fund is the largest of the 10 exchanges we track at $3.00B on Oct 18. It is also the biggest against its own market, equal to 60.47% of its perpetual open interest on the coins we follow. Delta Exchange comes next on that measure at 37.26%, with Binance at 14.23%. Across all 10 venues the pool totals $7.65B, a 24 hour change of -0.01%, or -$715K, and -0.40% over seven days. Binance's fund moved most, at +0.11%, to $2.44B. The total equals 16.41% of perpetual open interest. The fund is what a venue draws on when a liquidation closes past the trader's margin. These balances are reported by the exchanges, not audited. Board: /insurance-funds · Permalink: /brief/2026-10-18#2026-10-18-0920-insurance-daily #### 09:40 UTC · Bids thin out under Bitcoin's spot price Bid depth in the $BTC spot book shrank by 16.1% over the 24 hours to 09:39 UTC on Oct 18. Fewer buy orders were resting within 2% of the price than a day earlier, and the sell side grew by 4.3% over the same window. That left sellers with the heavier side across 21 venues, a -7% imbalance against buyers. The mid moved 0.6%, from $81.6K a day earlier to $82.1K. The biggest buy wall rested at $82.1K, 0.05% under the mid. The biggest sell wall sat at $82.2K, 0.15% above it. Both are a snapshot of resting orders, which can be pulled at any time. Board: /orderbook?symbol=BTC · Permalink: /brief/2026-10-18#2026-10-18-0940-orderbook-btc #### 10:00 UTC · Big traders split the flow almost evenly Large traders didn't pick a side in the 24 hours to 10:00 UTC on Oct 18. Buyers moved $3.97B against $3.78B from sellers across 4,094 big trades. That 51.2% buy share falls inside the 45% to 55% range we treat as two sided. $BTC carried the most of that money, $3.83B over 1,914 trades, with $ETH close behind at $3.37B over 1,816 trades. The single largest order of the day was in Ether, at $22.1M. $SOL came a distant third on our board, with 171 large trades worth $290.8M. Board: /whales · Permalink: /brief/2026-10-18#2026-10-18-1000-whales-daily #### 11:00 UTC · Short bets carry more modeled risk near price Traders betting against Bitcoin carried more of the modeled liquidation risk close to the price on Oct 18. At 11:00 UTC, with $BTC at $82,061, the estimated map put more exposure within 3% above the price, where short positions sit, than below it. On that side, the nearest modeled short liquidations start at $82,474 and the largest cluster is at $82,570. Shorts caught there would be forced to buy back. Below the price, the nearest estimated long liquidations sit at $81,804, with the largest cluster further down at $78,837. Board: /liqmap/btc · Permalink: /brief/2026-10-18#2026-10-18-1100-liqmap-btc #### 11:30 UTC · Jupiter perps traders lean 82% long On Jupiter Perps, traders hold far more bets on a rise than on a fall. Open longs total $69.5M against $15.6M in shorts, 82% long overall. $SOL carries the bulk at $47.3M long and $9.6M short. The biggest accounts on Hyperliquid lean the other way. Across 278 of the top 300 whales, 44.8% of notional is long. For the week of Oct 12 to Oct 18, the top $SOL trader on Jupiter realized $137.7K on $39.1M of volume. The JLP pool backing these trades holds $869.4M at 8.37% APR. Board: /jupiter-perps · Permalink: /brief/2026-10-18#2026-10-18-1130-dex-leaders #### 12:00 UTC · Litecoin traders close the most futures bets Litecoin led a quiet day of futures traders closing positions in the 24 hours to Oct 18, 11:35 UTC. Open interest in $LTC, the value of futures bets still open, moved -2.82% while price barely moved at -0.39%. Funding sat at -0.01%, a small fee shorts paid longs to stay in. Avalanche was close behind at -2.66% with price at -1.91%, and Dogecoin followed at -1.44%. Cardano went the other way. Open bets on $ADA grew 0.37% as price slipped -1.17%, the only coin on the board where new short positions were building. $BTC open interest also grew 0.98%, with price at 0.61%. Board: /oi-leaderboard · Permalink: /brief/2026-10-18#2026-10-18-1200-oi-movers #### 12:30 UTC · No Satoshi era coins moved this week None of the 34,124 Satoshi era outputs we watch moved a coin this week. Together they hold 1.71 million BTC, all in the oldest output type, pay to public key (P2PK), where the public key is written openly on chain. Across the whole network, 1.93 million $BTC sits in outputs with a visible public key. That is 9.61% of all bitcoin by value and 34.19% by count, measured on our own node at block 971,936 on Oct 18. This exposure describes how the coins are stored. It is not a timeline for when a quantum computer could reach them. Board: /quantum · Permalink: /brief/2026-10-18#2026-10-18-1230-quantum-weekly #### 12:30 UTC · Gate.io lists the only new perpetual $CLAUDIA was the single new perpetual, a futures contract with no expiry date, to appear across the six exchanges we track in the 24 hours to 12:30 UTC on Oct 18. Gate.io is the only venue carrying it so far. The contract settles in USDT and was first seen at 09:52 UTC on Oct 18. No other exchange on our list opened a new perpetual in that window, so the whole day's listings count comes down to one coin on one venue. Board: /listings · Permalink: /brief/2026-10-18#2026-10-18-1230-listings-daily #### 12:50 UTC · Bitcoin trades above its Oct 17 range Bitcoin is trading above the range that held most of its Oct 17 session, and Ether is not. At 12:44 UTC, $BTC was at $81,906.50, over the top of that range at $81,659.88. $ETH was at $2,414.36, still inside its own. On Oct 17, Bitcoin perpetuals spent 70% of their trading time between $81,292.78 and $81,659.88, with the most trade at $81,557.91. That range was only 0.45% wide, and the session closed at $81,455.90. Ether's range ran from $2,401.90 to $2,437.02 around a most traded price of $2,426.73. It was wider at 1.45%, and Ether closed the session at $2,401.58, 1.04% under that busiest price. Board: /symbols/BTCUSDT · Permalink: /brief/2026-10-18#2026-10-18-1250-market-profile-daily #### 13:00 UTC · Estimated liquidations hug Ether on both sides Estimated liquidation levels sit tight around Ether's price on both sides. With $ETH at $2,417 on Oct 18 at 13:00 UTC, the nearest modeled short liquidations are at $2,429 and the nearest long liquidations at $2,409. Further out, the largest modeled cluster of short levels is at $2,497, where traders betting on a fall would have to buy back. Below price, the largest cluster of long levels is at $2,333. Within 3% of price the estimated exposure is balanced, with neither longs nor shorts carrying more of it. Board: /liqmap/eth · Permalink: /brief/2026-10-18#2026-10-18-1300-liqmap-eth #### 13:37 UTC · Ether longs lose $6.2M in a 30 minute flush A 30 minute flush just cleared $6.2M of $ETH long positions across the major venues. These are bets on a higher price, closed by the exchanges once losses ate through the margin behind them. The other side barely moved. Short positions, bets on a lower price, saw $6.4K liquidated over the same half hour. The count comes from the raw liquidation streams of the major venues. Board: /liqmap/eth · Permalink: /brief/2026-10-18#2026-10-18-1337-event-liq-burst #### 14:00 UTC · Bids outweigh asks on Bitcoin and Ether books Bitcoin and Ether spot books leaned toward buyers by the exact same margin at 13:59 UTC on Oct 18. Within 2% of price, both coins showed an imbalance of +7.3% in favour of resting bids across 21 venues. $BTC at $81,478 had $176.9M of bids against $152.9M of asks. The two largest blocks sat on either side of the price, $32.7M to buy at $81,438 and $33.7M to sell at $81,519. $ETH at $2,396 carried $85.9M of bids against $74.2M of asks, with an $18.4M buy wall at $2,394 and an $18.8M sell wall at $2,399. These are resting orders, not trades, and they can be pulled before price reaches them. Board: /orderbook · Permalink: /brief/2026-10-18#2026-10-18-1400-orderbook-walls #### 14:00 UTC · Chainlink's order book costs the most to hit Sending a $1.0M market order into the $LINK book on Oct 18 cost an estimated 26.4 bps in slippage, the gap between the quoted price and the average fill. That made Chainlink the most expensive of the eight books we track. The same order cost 0.3 bps in $BTC and 0.7 bps in $ETH. Cardano was the next thinnest at 19.3 bps, then Dogecoin at 11.5 bps and BNB at 6.7 bps. On the deep side, Solana came in at 3.5 bps and XRP at 4.9 bps. On a thin book, every large forced sale or forced buy moves price further than the same order would on a deep one. That gap is where leveraged positions in the smaller coins carry the most exposure. Board: /slippage · Permalink: /brief/2026-10-18#2026-10-18-1400-slippage-daily #### 14:30 UTC · Data Layer sealed 2,012 windows on Solana From Oct 11 to Oct 18, 2,012 five minute windows of our Data Layer records were written to Solana, out of 2,016 possible, for coverage of 99.80%. The median time from a window closing to its Solana block was 53 seconds. Four windows were missed and 7 anchors landed later than 120 seconds. Base carried 7 daily attestations, and 255,916 records were sealed over the week. For a trader, a record in our catalog can be matched to the signed Merkle root of its window. That shows it was not changed after sealing. Anyone can check every epoch from the Solana and Base chains alone, without going through us. Board: /proof · Permalink: /brief/2026-10-18#2026-10-18-1430-proof-weekly Written by the ByKaranteli desk writer, an AI model, from the platform's recorded data and checked against that data before publishing, without human edits. Translations are machine made from the English note; the English text is the record. ## Past briefs (last 30 days) Every daily brief is archived with the numbers it shipped with. - 2026-10-18: /md/brief/2026-10-18 - 2026-10-17: /md/brief/2026-10-17 - 2026-10-16: /md/brief/2026-10-16 - 2026-10-15: /md/brief/2026-10-15 - 2026-10-14: /md/brief/2026-10-14 - 2026-10-13: /md/brief/2026-10-13 - 2026-10-12: /md/brief/2026-10-12 - 2026-10-11: /md/brief/2026-10-11 - 2026-10-10: /md/brief/2026-10-10 - 2026-10-09: /md/brief/2026-10-09 - 2026-10-08: /md/brief/2026-10-08 - 2026-10-07: /md/brief/2026-10-07 - 2026-10-06: /md/brief/2026-10-06 - 2026-10-05: /md/brief/2026-10-05 - 2026-10-04: /md/brief/2026-10-04 - 2026-10-03: /md/brief/2026-10-03 - 2026-10-02: /md/brief/2026-10-02 - 2026-10-01: /md/brief/2026-10-01 - 2026-09-30: /md/brief/2026-09-30 - 2026-09-29: /md/brief/2026-09-29 - 2026-09-28: /md/brief/2026-09-28 - 2026-09-27: /md/brief/2026-09-27 - 2026-09-26: /md/brief/2026-09-26 - 2026-09-25: /md/brief/2026-09-25 - 2026-09-24: /md/brief/2026-09-24 - 2026-09-23: /md/brief/2026-09-23 - 2026-09-22: /md/brief/2026-09-22 - 2026-09-21: /md/brief/2026-09-21 - 2026-09-20: /md/brief/2026-09-20 - 2026-09-19: /md/brief/2026-09-19 ## Related - https://bykaranteli.com/brief/weekly - https://bykaranteli.com/indices - https://bykaranteli.com/heatmap - https://bykaranteli.com/correlations - https://bykaranteli.com/newsroom Everything in one fetch: https://bykaranteli.com/llms-full.txt