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CPI at 3.7% and a 28% October hike chance coincided with hedging doubling as ETH, XRP and SOL fell more than BTC, the report and traders said.
Altcoin drawdowns outpaced Bitcoin on the day, according to the report, as the total crypto market cap fell 2.5% to $2.8 trillion.
Ethereum dropped 5.5% to a $289 billion market cap, XRP fell 5.1% to $82.4 billion and Solana slipped 3.8% to $60.6 billion. Bitcoin declined 3.1% on the day and 2.6% on the week, to a $1.6 trillion market cap, the report said. Measured against Bitcoin’s move, Ethereum’s daily drop was roughly 1.8 times as large. A $1.6 trillion Bitcoin against a $2.8 trillion total is about 57% of crypto by value.
Macro and positioning drove the move
The report links the slide to macro pressures after the consumer price index rose 3.7% in the year to September and Myriad predictors pointed to a 28% chance of an October interest rate hike. Nick Forster, founder of options exchange Derive.xyz, said this pushed traders into protection, noting that hedging on the platform doubled as whales pulled back optimistic spring bets. “This immediate pull-back from long-term upside bets alongside aggressive short-term hedging shows a dramatic regime shift,” he said.
When markets reset like this, altcoins tend to be hit harder, Luke Nolan, senior research associate at CoinShares, said. “Alts are typically more sensitive to financial conditions, and tightening affects the premise of liquidity expanding.” He also pointed to the U.S. dollar near an 18-month high as additional pressure; he said crypto tends to show an inverse relationship to the U.S. Dollar Index over a medium-term horizon.
▲ 0.06%
▼ 1.28%
Prices as of 2026-10-15 15:03 UTC. Source: CoinGecko.
Flows show profit-taking after a strong run
Max Shannon, senior associate at Bitwise Europe, said the pullback is partly a hangover from recent altcoin strength. Since the start of October, futures open interest in altcoins excluding Ethereum has fallen by $8 billion, which he read as traders taking chips off the table.
He said the same pattern is visible in Ethereum. The report cites his view that ETH outperformed Bitcoin for three consecutive months, the first since March 2021, and investors have been cashing in. Shannon said Ethereum ETFs saw 11 straight trading days of net outflows totalling $782.8 million before a brief inflow on Tuesday. After that, money has been heading back out, with $129.5 million in net outflows, per CoinGlass data.
Nolan said he would want to see expectations of an October rate hike fall before calling for a recovery, adding that the near-term path for altcoins could go either way.
Source: Decrypt.
This article was written with AI assistance and reviewed by an editor.
This content is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice.
🧠 HafidWatch Take
A clear sign of recovery in altcoins may hinge on a shift in expectations around the October rate hike. Until investors see less likelihood of this increase, the outlook for altcoins remains uncertain, with flows continuing to fluctuate. Monitoring ETF outflows and futures open interest will be crucial to understanding whether this current pullback is temporary profit-taking or the start of a more sustained downturn.
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