Bitcoin slid below $81,000 on Thursday and Ethereum fell to near $2,400 as the entire top-ten board turned red, and “Uptober” is not off to the often-memed start many expected. The damage was worse further down the caps: Zcash (ZEC) lost 11% in a day, NEAR dropped 16%, Pump.fun (PUMP) slid 11%, and Venice Token fell 10%, while Dogecoin (DOGE) and Chainlink (LINK) are both down double digits on the week.

Institutional flows added to the pressure. Spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds shed $484.9 million on Wednesday, their worst day since the spring, followed by another $244 million in outflows on Thursday, flipping October to roughly minus $400 million for the month. Ethereum funds have now bled money for eight straight sessions, losing $640 million over that stretch. Prices were climbing last week even as inflows had slowed to almost nothing — a thin market, and thin markets give it back fast, as Decrypt's Morning Minute put it.

Multiple catalysts turned at once. Tom Lee said Bitmine will stop buying Ethereum once it owns 5% of supply, roughly 100,000 coins away, removing a buyer that showed up every week since June 2025. Ethereum funding rates flipped negative midweek for the first time in months, meaning traders betting on a fall now outnumber those betting on a rise, and they added those bets as the price dropped rather than closing out. Oil jumped on attacks against Iranian tankers, pushing money out of anything risky. And an Ethereum researcher told the community to prepare for “Bunker Mode.”

Even so, crypto majors have been rebounding over the past 12 hours. Bitcoin is back over $82,000, ETH is re-approaching $2,500, and ZEC is now green on the day. Decrypt's Morning Minute argued that no part of the macro crypto bull case for this cycle — the continuing debasement trade, institutions coming onchain, tokenization acceleration, and agentic crypto — has changed or weakened, calling the move much more likely “a correction inside a decent run rather than a collapse” and a chance to flush leverage and late longs before grinding higher into the next leg of the emerging bull market. The drop also came just one day before the anniversary of Oct. 10 and the nasty selloff that started the bear market a year ago, prompting the newsletter to quip: “Here's hoping we get a ‘Reverse 10/10' tomorrow.”

Markets at a Glance

• Crypto majors were red but rebounding after Thursday's selloff: BTC -1% at $82,700, ETH -3% at $2,495, SOL -5% at $110, HYPE -2% at $86, ZEC even at $1,230.
• Top alt movers included KAIA (+57%), STRK (+25%), PYTH (+11%), and ATOM (+8%).
• Oil fell 2% to $91; gold rose 1% to $4,200.
• Stock futures were green and rebounding after the selloff: Dow +0.1%, Nasdaq +0.7%.
• Nearly $1 billion in crypto longs were liquidated over the past 24 hours, with ETH longs hit the hardest.

Notable Moves and Developments

• Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said it is plausible AI could break encryption within two years and warned the industry may be quantum-proofing with the wrong tools. He argued that lattice-based cryptography, which several projects are adopting to survive quantum computers, is exactly the kind of math AI could crack, and pointed toward hash-based methods instead — while urging caution rather than panic.
• A government wallet moved $1.01 billion in Bitcoin from the Bitfinex hack seizure to a new unlabeled address on Thursday. No exchange deposits followed, and a 2025 executive order bars selling coins held in the strategic reserve.
• A wallet holding 100 Bitcoin mined in July 2010 moved for the first time in 16 years; the coins were worth about $29 when they were created. Notably, the holder paid $1.22 in fees to move what is now $8.3 million.
• Solana's biggest exchange, Orca, and lender Loopscale merged into a New York company called Formation that aims to finance AI, energy, robotics, and defense, with plans to run a tokenized stock venue under the SEC's new rules.
• Securitize launched tokenized versions of 12 big US stocks on Solana, including Apple, Nvidia, Tesla, Amazon, and Microsoft.
• Two firms tied to market maker DWF Labs sued custodian BitGo for $141 million in London, claiming it sold tokens that were supposed to stay locked.

Corporate Treasuries and ETFs

Bitcoin ETFs saw $244 million in net outflows on Thursday, while Ethereum ETFs saw $72 million in outflows.

Meme Coin Tracker

Meme leaders were red: DOGE -5%, SHIB -2%, PEPE -4%, PENGU -8%, TRUMP -2%, SPX -6%, BONK -5%. Robinhood chain leaders were red and continued their downtrend: Pons -12% to $230 million, AI -12% at $98 million, and Cashcat -7% at $113 million, while Hookr (+35%), WTH (+27%), and CRH (+60x) led top movers. Solana's top movers included PQC (+1500%), HeeHaw (+1800%), JeanPhil (+160%), and Baton (+40%).

Tokens, Airdrops and Protocols

• Decrypt launched Money Accounts on Solana, a single balance that funds everything it builds. Deposits sit in USDT, gas is paid for you, and the same balance covers earning, swaps, prediction markets, and perpetual futures without bridging between networks.
• Pump.fun introduced Custom Pairs, letting users launch a coin paired with any other coin on the platform, meaning every buy of the new token routes through the original one first.
• Citrini Research published a crypto basket betting on AI agents moving money onchain, led by Derive (DRV), Lighter (LIT), and Ether.fi (ETHFI) at 10% each, followed by Aave and Ethena at 9%, Solana at 8%, Hyperliquid and Aerodrome at 7%, and more.
• Hyperliquid led onchain protocols in daily revenue with $2.45 million, followed by Pump with $2.41 million and Polymarket with $472,000.

NFTs

NFT leaders were mixed: Punks -5% at 31.3 ETH, BAYC +1% at 6.09 ETH, and Pudgy -1% at 2.85 ETH. Quotrons (+12%) and Original Blokyz (+10%) led top movers.