Bitcoin steadies near $81,700 as altcoins rebound, pepe climbs 13%
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Bitcoin steadies near $81,700 as altcoins rebound, pepe climbs 13%
Bitcoin rose 0.5% to around $81,700 since midnight UTC while the CoinDesk 80 gained 1.4% and memecoins climbed 2.9%.
By Oliver Knight, Omkar Godbole|Edited by Sheldon Reback
Oct 23, 2026, 6:54 a.m. EDT
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Pepe leads rebound (CoinDesk data)
Summary
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Bitcoin rose 0.5% to around $81,700 since midnight UTC, recovering from a low of around $81,000, while Asian stocks steadied after Thursday’s tech sell-off.
Altcoins moved faster, with the CoinDesk 80 gaining 1.4%, memecoins climbing 2.9% and frog-themed memecoin pepe jumping 13%.
Traders are now looking to the Fed’s Oct. 27-28 meeting.
Bitcoin BTC$84,459.46 rose 0.5% to around $81,700 since midnight UTC, outpaced by altcoins. Ether ETH$2,490.55 rose 0.9% and the CoinDesk 80 (CD80) altcoin index added 0.7% while the memecoin gauge climbed 2.9%.
The rebound follows Thursday’s tech-led selloff, during which the Nasdaq Composite index fell 2.6% in its steepest decline since June. Asian markets steadied as South Korea’s Kospi added 0.3% and China’s CSI 300 rose 1.7% while Japan’s Nikkei 225 slipped 0.25%.
Traders now look to the Fed’s Oct. 27-28 meeting, with Brent crude near $113 keeping inflation worries alive, and to exchange-traded fund flows, after U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs lost $635 million on Thursday, according to SoSoValue data, following more than $1 billion of inflows over the first three days of the week.
Derivatives positioning
Crypto futures trading cools: Volume fell 19% over 24 hours and liquidations dropped 23%, a day after both jumped. Open interest (OI) rose 1% after declining yesterday, with bitcoin's price little changed, so traders are adding positions again, not just closing them. The long/short taker volume ratio tilts slightly to shorts, at 51.6% against 48.4%.
OI-adjusted CVD points to bullish reset: Cumulative volume delta (CVD) tracks whether market orders are mostly buys or sells. Yesterday most tokens ended the day below zero, with the weakest near -0.12%. Today, almost all are within 0.05% of zero. The exception is XAUT, sitting around -0.25%.
BTC and ETH, majors see quiet rebuilding: Futures open interest rose about 1% in both coins while their prices barely moved, indicating a modest build in new positions. Liquidations fell sharply, by about two-thirds in bitcoin and a third in ether. Bitcoin funding rose to 0.0067% from 0.0041%, so longs are paying a little more to hold. Ether funding is flat.
BNB and SUI, funding flips back to positive: Yesterday, shorts were paying longs in BNB and SUI, at -0.0048% and -0.0036%, and DOGE was steady. Today all three are positive, and funding rose in most of the top tokens. The prices of all three rose, so longs, not shorts, are now the ones paying to hold.
De-risking in mZEC, SOL, XRP and DOGE continues: Open interest fell in all four by more than price alone explains, so positions are really being closed. ZEC is the sharpest, with open interest sliding 8% on a 1.5% price drop. It is the second day of heavy exits, which points to capital flight.
New money keeps entering commodity perps: Open interest rose in gold, silver and crude oil for a second day. Gold and silver prices fell, and funding is positive in both, meaning that longs are the ones paying. Crude oil open interest rose along with a 1.4% price gain. Funding is negative, so shorts are the ones paying. The gold token XAUT looks different. It has the deepest negative OI-adjusted CVD of any token, meaning market sells dominated the action.
Monero's funding spike has faded: Funding for XMR was the hottest on the heatmap earlier in the 24-hour window. It has since cooled back to normal levels. The leverage build-up flagged earlier has eased.
Bitcoin activity sits in upside calls and ether activity in puts: In bitcoin, the most traded option was the Nov. 27 $98,000 call, followed by the Dec. 25 $88,000 call. Five of the most-active six are calls, all above the market, and the only put is a $76,000 contract expiring Oct. 30. In ether, puts take the top two spots, led by the Oct. 26 $2,200 put with roughly 9,000 contracts. The volume data doesn't say whether the trades were buys or sells.
25-delta skew shows strong put bias in ether: Ether's one-week put-call skew is near 13%, so puts cost a lot more than calls, and it has climbed since early October. Bitcoin's one-week skew has dropped to about 4% from a mid-month peak near 14%. Bitcoin's downside worry has eased while ether's has grown, which fits the heavy put activity in ether.
Token talk
Pepe PEPE$0.0₅4654 rose 14% to lead the CD100, the biggest advance in a month. The jump extends the Ethereum-based frog memecoin’s gain to 23% over the week and 16% over the month, a run with no clear catalyst.
That performance sets it apart from the rest of the sector, where floki FLOKI$0.0₄2459, bonk BONK$0.0₅3069 and shiba inu (SHIB) rose between 3.3% and 4.9% today, but remain down as much as 16% on the month. Pepe’s 24-hour trading volume totaled around $353 million, 10% more than around the same time yesterday.
Layer-1 tokens polkadot DOT$1.1657 and cosmos ATOM$1.7685 both rose more than 5%, extending weekly gains to above 6%. Still, polkadot is still down 2.5% in October while cosmos is up 3.6%.
DeFi tokens bounced after leading Thursday’s declines, with uniswap (UNI) gaining 3.5% to around $7.25 and ethena (ENA) rising 2.0% to around 20 cents.
The CD100’s weakest monthly performers also rose, with doublezero 2Z$0.03202 up 2.5% and monad MON$0.02196 up 4.3%, though they remain down 49% and 31% over the month.
CoinMarketCap’s “Altcoin Season” indicator is at 58/100, rising from Monday’s low of 54/100 as positive sentiment continues to impact the altcoin sector during bitcoin’s tight trading range.
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