Bitcoin fell below $82,000, posting its steepest drop in two weeks, while losses deepened among altcoins and liquidations in the crypto derivatives market topped $431 million.
According to CoinDesk’s October 22 market analysis, Bitcoin fell as much as 2.9% from 03:00 (Turkey time). Asian stocks and U.S. index futures also declined as mixed financial results from Tesla and Meta revived concerns about spending on artificial intelligence.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index fell more than 3%, South Korea’s Kospi dropped 3.5%, and Japan’s Nikkei 225 lost 2.7%. Losses in Nasdaq 100 futures reached 1.32%, while selling in the crypto market was concentrated particularly in decentralized finance (DeFi) tokens.
Which altcoins suffered the steepest losses?
In the report’s price snapshot, Ethereum fell 2.6% to around $2,400, while Solana dropped 2.4% to approximately $104. The DeFi index lost 5.6%, with declines even sharper for some tokens:
- Curve (CRV): Fell 8.2% to around $0.37.
- Ethena (ENA): Lost 7.2%, bringing its monthly decline to approximately 25%.
- Uniswap (UNI): Fell 5%, bringing its October loss to around 20%.
- Worldcoin (WLD): Declined 7.3%.
- Starknet (STRK) and Sandbox (SAND): Lost 6.1% and 5.1%, respectively.
A separate chart snapshot from CoinDesk Indices for the European morning also showed the DeFi index down 5.4%, exceeding Bitcoin’s 2.2% loss. These measurements, taken at different times, show that selling pressure was heavier in DeFi.
Liquidations rose as altcoin positions shrank
Derivatives trading volume rose 19% to $226.6 billion. By contrast, the dollar value of open interest fell 2.46% to $141.8 billion. Liquidations rose 52% to $431.1 million, with liquidations on the long and short sides at similar levels.
However, a decline in open interest does not mean the same thing for every asset. The analysis said that the dollar-denominated declines in Bitcoin and Ethereum largely reflected falling prices, while the number of open contracts changed little. In ZEC, NEAR, UNI, LINK, and SUI, open interest fell faster than prices, indicating that positions were being closed.
The decline came despite more than $1 billion flowing into spot Bitcoin ETFs during the first three days of the week. In Solana’s case, the Alpenglow upgrade going live also failed to prevent SOL from falling in the same price snapshot.
Not investment advice.