Morning Minute: Uptober Turns Sour as Crypto Majors Slide

Morning Minute is a daily newsletter written by Tyler Warner. The analysis and opinions expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Decrypt. And check out our daily news show 'FOMO HOUR' covering all of the top stories and market action.

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📉 Uptober Turns Sour as Crypto Majors Slide

Bitcoin dipped below $81,000 Thursday, Ethereum fell close to $2,400 and the whole top ten board went red on seven days. Uptober is certainly not off to the often-memed start expected.

The damage was worse further down. Zcash fell 11% in a day, NEAR 16%, Pump.fun 11%, Venice Token 10%. Dogecoin and Chainlink are both down double digits on the week.

Spot Bitcoin funds shed $484.9 million on Wednesday, the worst day since the spring, followed by another $244M in outflows yesterday. That flips October negative at 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 while inflows had already slowed to almost nothing. Rising prices without new money is a thin market, and thin markets give it back fast.

Multiple things 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. Funding rates on Ethereum 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 to those bets as price dropped rather than closing out. Oil jumped on attacks against Iranian tankers, pushing money out of anything risky. And of course, there was the Ethereum researcher telling everyone to prepare for “Bunker Mode.”

With that said, crypto majors have been rebounding over the past 12 hours. Bitcoin is back over $82k, ETH is re-approaching $2,500 and ZEC is now green on the day. And no part of the macro crypto bull case for this cycle (debasement trade continues, institutions coming onchain, tokenization acceleration, agentic crypto, etc.) has changed or weakened. This is much more likely a correction inside a decent run rather than a collapse. A chance to flush all the leverage and late longs before grinding higher for the next leg of the emerging bull market. And of course this comes just a day before the anniversary of 10/10 and the nasty selloff that started the bear market one year ago. Here’s hoping we get a “Reverse 10/10” tomorrow…

🌎 Macro Crypto and Markets

• Crypto majors are red but rebounding after Thursday’s selloff; BTC -1% at $827k; ETH -3% at $2,495; SOL -5% at $110; HYPE -2% at $86; ZEC even at $1,230
• Top alt movers include KAIA (+57%), STRK (+25%), PYTH (+11%) and ATOM (+8%)
• Oil -2% at $91; Gold +1% at $4,200
• Stock futures are green and rebounding after selloff; DOW +0.1%, Nasdaq +0.7%
• Almost $1B in crypto longs were liquidated over the past 24 hours, with ETH longs hit the hardest
• Vitalik Buterin said it's plausible AI could break encryption within two years and warned the industry may be quantum-proofing with the wrong tools; he thinks lattice-based cryptography, which several projects are adopting to survive quantum computers, is exactly the kind AI math could crack, and he's now pointing toward hash-based methods instead (though he also urged caution and not panic)
• A government wallet moved $1.01 billion in Bitcoin from the Bitfinex hack seizure to a new unlabeled address 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 coins worth about $29 when they were created; notably, the holder paid $1.22 in fees to move $8.3 million
• Solana’s biggest exchange Orca and lender Loopscale merged into a New York company called Formation aiming to finance AI, energy, robotics and defense; it 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 & ETFs

• The Bitcoin ETFs saw $244M in net outflows on Thursday; the ETH ETFs saw $72M 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 continue downtrend; Pons -12% to $230M; AI -12% at $98M; Cashcat -7% at $113M; Hookr +35%, WTH +27% and CRH +60x led top movers
• Solana top movers included PQC +1500%, HeeHaw +1800%, JeanPhil +160% and Baton +40%

💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker

• 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, Lighter and Ether.fi 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 revenue on the day with $2.45M, followed by Pump with $2.41M and Polymarket with $472k

🚚 What is happening in NFTs?

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