Bitcoin rose 1.92% to $78,481, bouncing off a seven-week low below $76,000, while Ether gained 2.82% to $2,327.80. Total crypto market capitalization stands at $2.63 trillion on $77.7 billion in 24-hour volume — roughly the entire Croatian economy passing through a currency exchange three times before lunch.
A blue Congress, green screens
The session began as a political story and ended as a market one. Democrats swept both the House and the Senate in the US midterms, a result the tape did not greet calmly — first came the familiar reflex of fear, a slide under $76,000, then the equally familiar reflex of buying. Midterms in the year after a presidential election are to markets what halftime is to an NFL team: nobody remembers the score, but everybody argues about the tactics in the locker room.
Historically, the year following a midterm has been bitcoin’s strongest in the four-year cycle. That does not mean history repeats itself — it means enough people are convinced it does, and that conviction alone moves price.
ETFs are bleeding, but less than the headline suggests
Bitcoin ETFs shed $1.16 billion across recent sessions, a move Bitwise called short-term selling. Translated from investment language into human: passengers stepped off the train at Fear Station, but nobody tore up the return ticket. Institutional money rarely exits through the front door — it usually just strolls to the platform and waits for the next service.
Meanwhile the Federal Reserve is tightening bank lending rules. This is the part of the story nobody reads and the part that decides how many cups the café can pour when the rush arrives. Less credit means less leverage, and less leverage means every rally looks more impressive than it actually is.
Binance: the invoice is still being tallied
Fallout from the Binance breach keeps washing through the system. Roughly $11 billion left the exchange in 46 hours, attackers routed 81% of the stolen Solana through THORChain, and South Korea ordered a mass wallet lockdown. Changpeng Zhao has called for an industry-wide security alliance — which is, frankly, a bit like the captain of the Titanic campaigning for better lifeboats. The full reconstruction of that 20-minute scenario, and what it means for Croatia’s MiCA licensing path, sits in this morning’s analysis.
Zcash walked back in from retirement
The most interesting story of the day is not Bitcoin. Zcash jumped 10.16% to $1,301 and climbed to tenth place on the leaderboard with a $22.15 billion market cap. A project that spent years living on the reputation of “privacy nobody uses” suddenly carries weight it has not had since 2016, when it printed an all-time high of $3,192.
Monero, the older rival from the same neighbourhood, added 2.46% to $640.76 and sits 5.14% higher on the week. When the two oldest privacy narratives rise together while regulators circle stablecoins, the market is sending a fairly clear message: a slice of capital wants a room with no supervisor at the door.
Ether grinds, Solana lags
Ether’s 2.82% is the strongest print among the majors, though it trades 12.7% below where it stood a week ago and 53% under its $4,946 record. The ETH/BTC ratio has recovered to 0.0296 — nowhere near the level that would send Ethereum maximalists to the tattoo parlour, but enough to break a three-month torpor.
Solana added 1.33% to $93.62, yet lost 9.13% on the week and trades 68% below its $293.30 peak. A sports commentator would file that under “solid performance, poor result”.
The numbers holding up the structure
- Bitcoin: $78,481 (+1.92% / 24h, −3.62% / 7d) · MCap $1.578T · volume $31.4B · supply 20,105,365 BTC · ATH $126,100 · ATL $67.81
- Ether: $2,327.80 (+2.82% / 24h, −1.90% / 7d) · MCap $284.4B · volume $11.55B · supply 122.19M ETH · ATH $4,946
- Dominance: BTC 59.94% · ETH 10.81%
- Total market: $2.63T · 24h volume $77.7B · 22,757 active cryptocurrencies
- Fear & Greed: 34 (fear) — 26 yesterday
The rest of the board
BNB added 0.73% to $701.68, XRP 2.48% to $1.29, and Tron is the only name in the big five printing red — down 0.91% to $0.3192. Hyperliquid gained 2.24% to $86.42 and is the only large project green on the week (+5.68%), with its $97.96 record within reach.
Down the building, traffic was busier: BTW +16.50%, DRV +11.42%, LIT +11.28%, VVV +10.71%, Raydium +9.40%, NIGHT +9.12%, POL +8.85%, Ethena +6.95%, NEAR +5.77%. On the other side: TRUMP −8.20%, HASH −4.88%, WLFI −2.32%, Mantle −2.23%, Pi −1.23%, Filecoin −0.97%. The irony is almost scripted — a token carrying the president’s name fell on the same day Justin Sun sought sanctions over allegedly undisclosed UAE owners at World Liberty Financial.
Sentiment: the rain stopped, the barometer still reads storm
The Fear & Greed Index climbed from 26 to 34. That is still fear territory, but the gap between 26 and 34 is not cosmetic: the first number marks people selling in panic, the second marks people who have stopped panicking. Markets do not recover when everybody buys — they recover when the stampede ends.
The institutional side: tokenization without fanfare
Three moves slipped under the radar and will be remembered longer than a daily candle. The SEC, through a no-action letter, signalled it views Canton Coin as a digital commodity; Morgan Stanley became one of the first banks to tokenize US equities and Treasuries through DTCC’s service; and the CFTC allowed trading of perpetual futures on stocks. Three institutions, three approaches, one conclusion: infrastructure is being poured under the road while the surface argues about price.
What stays on the radar
The key level remains $76,000 — that is where the market found a floor on Wednesday morning. First resistance sits at the round $80,000, then $82,500, where two October breakout attempts broke down. A move below $74,000 puts the entire “midterm rally” construction on the test bench.
What actually matters is not the chart but three numbers: weekly inflows into bitcoin ETFs, withdrawal counts from exchanges after the Binance case, and the Zcash/Bitcoin pair. The first measures institutional appetite, the second measures trust in custody, the third measures what privacy is worth on any given day.
Note: figures recorded at 12:00 UTC from the CoinGecko API (top 500 by market capitalization) plus own calculations. Crypto is volatile and this is not investment advice — any position can lose its entire value.
📈 The other side of today’s market story: Daily Winners and Daily Losers.