The short version
- Crypto October 2026 ended red for 13 of the 14 biggest coins: Bitcoin fell 7.2%, Ethereum and XRP 16%, Solana 19.1% and Stellar 25.1%, while Monero rose 9.9%.
- HYPE (−3.3%) and Bitcoin Cash (−6.9%) also beat Bitcoin, and Bitcoin’s share of the market climbed to 59.3% as altcoins fell more than twice as hard.
- Next: the ETH/BTC ratio at 0.0291 (0.0321 to win back) and the Fed’s December 9 decision. Make sure to follow Base Camp on X for more updates like this.
Crypto October 2026 was a bad month to own anything with a lot of beta. Bitcoin lost 7.2% on Binance, which sounds rough until you see the rest of the board: Ethereum and XRP fell 16%, Solana 19.1%, Dogecoin 20% and Stellar 25.1%.
Only one big coin finished green. Monero rose 9.9%, and it isn’t even listed on Binance. Hyperliquid’s HYPE lost just 3.3% in a month that included the biggest crypto hack on record. So who held up, who cracked, and how much of September’s rally is left?
How Did the Big Coins Do in Crypto October 2026?
Badly, with three exceptions. Of the 14 biggest coins (leaving out stablecoins and exchange-issued tokens with little trading), only Monero closed October higher, while HYPE and Bitcoin Cash beat Bitcoin’s 7.2% drop. Everything else did worse.
For context, the whole crypto market is worth about $2.63 trillion at the time of writing, per CoinGecko. Bitcoin’s share of it has climbed to 59.3%, which is what happens when altcoins fall twice as hard as BTC.
Most of the damage came in the last three days. A hawkish Fed meeting on Wednesday, the $6.3 billion Binance hack on Thursday night and a chip-stock sell-off on Friday sent Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, Solana and most of the list to their October lows on October 30.
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Which Coins Held Up Best in October?
Monero, by a distance: it was the best performing crypto among the big names. XMR opened October at $544.84 on Kraken and closed at $598.60, holding around $600 while the rest of the market slid. Privacy coins had a strong autumn, and Monero has no ETF flows, no unlocks and no Binance order book to get dragged around by.
HYPE took the hits and stayed standing. It traded as low as $74.45 on October 24, then jumped on Thursday when Intercontinental Exchange, the owner of the New York Stock Exchange, backed trade.xyz, a stock-perps market built on Hyperliquid. It hit $97.74 and closed the month at $87.93. That held even as whales took profits on the last day of the month:
Whales are dumping $HYPE!
Wallet 0x2685 sold 912,383 $HYPE ($82.09M) 6 hours ago, which it bought a month ago, making over $10M in profit.
Wallet 0x648F sold 296,705 $HYPE ($26.72M) 8 hours ago, which it bought 11 months ago, making $16.5M in profit.
arkm.com/explorer/addre…
Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin and BNB finished between −6.9% and −8.5%. BNB is the surprise here. Its own exchange lost $6.3 billion in a hack and paused withdrawals, yet BNB fell less than Ethereum. Binance’s promise to cover every loss, plus coins that couldn’t leave the exchange while withdrawals were paused, did a lot of the holding.
SIDE TRAIL: Altcoin Season: Rotation, BTC Dominance and Why the Old Playbook Broke
Which Coins Fell the Most?
Stellar, Cardano, Dogecoin and Solana, all down 19% or more. XLM dropped from $0.2264 to $0.1695, and ADA from $0.2465 to $0.1930. Both had rallied hard in September, so October took back what came in fastest.
Solana’s 19.1% drop leaves SOL at $95.54, under $100 for the month’s close and more than two and a half times Bitcoin’s loss. Ethereum fell 16% to $2,255.66, and against Bitcoin it lost 9.5%, with the ETH/BTC ratio sliding from 0.0321 to 0.0291. That’s the number to watch for anyone waiting on an altcoin season. It’s going the wrong way.
XRP and Dogecoin had no single disaster, just a steady leak. XRP slid from $1.49 to $1.2519, and DOGE ended at $0.0756 after never once reaching $0.10 all month. Chainlink was hit the same way: a 26.9% September rally, then an 18.8% October that took LINK from $14.37 to $11.67.
Zcash’s drop looks big at 13%, but it came off a huge base. ZEC traded above $1,400 on the first day of the month and found buyers at $1,049 on October 18, well before the Binance chaos. It closed at $1,251.42.
TRON had its own problem. The Binance hacker swapped 234 million USDT into TRX to dodge a Tether freeze, which pumped TRX to $0.3654 for a few hours before it fell back to $0.3038 by the close. It finished down 10%, though it is still one of only four coins on the list that are up for the year.
Did October Wipe Out September’s Rally?
Not for everyone. Zcash fell 13% in October but is still 47.6% higher than on September 1, after a 69.6% jump in September. Bitcoin Cash (+15.5%), Monero (+14.9%), HYPE (+6.3%), Chainlink (+3.1%) and BNB (+1.8%) also kept something.
The rest gave back all of it and more. Bitcoin is 1.3% below its September 1 open, and Ethereum, XRP, Solana and Dogecoin are 7% to 9% lower. In other words, two months of trading left most portfolios where they started, with a lot more stress along the way.
The year tells the same story, and it puts crypto October 2026 in context. Only four of the 14 are up in 2026: HYPE (+245.5%), Zcash (+144.3%), Monero (+38.1%) and TRON (+6.7%). Bitcoin is down 11.5% from its $87,648 January open, Ethereum 24.1% and Cardano 42.1%.
What the Crew Is Watching in November
Bitcoin dominance first. At 59.3% it says money is hiding in BTC, not hunting in altcoins, and a turn there would show up in the ETH/BTC ratio before anywhere else. A weekly close back above 0.0321, where ETH/BTC started October, would be the first sign.
Then Binance. Withdrawals started reopening in phases on Sunday, and the exchange has promised a full proof-of-reserves report by Tuesday. If coins stuck on Binance since Thursday get sold once they can move, the altcoins at the bottom of this table are the ones with the least room to absorb it.
Last, the Fed. Two members voted for a rate hike at the October meeting, and the next decision lands on December 9. October showed which coins pay for hawkish surprises. If December brings a hike, expect the same order on the scoreboard: Bitcoin bends, the high-beta altcoins break.
TRAIL MAP: Market Cap, Supply and Why “Cheap” Coins Aren’t Cheap
VikingXBT has been trading crypto since 2017. The focus is futures, onchain data and automation. Onchain flows get checked before a chart is trusted, and anything repetitive gets automated. VikingXBT built Base Camp's own onchain scanner, which flags bundlers, snipers, dev holdings and wallet clusters in one view, and backtests strategies before trading them.
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