The Weekly Wrap: Crypto Remains Resilient Despite Macro Pressure & Crypto-Specific Concerns

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This Week’s Top Stories

“Ledger confirms hardware implant in CryptoBilis reseller devices as MediaMarkt suspends sales in Europe.” – This week 

• This week, Ledger has confirmed that some hardware wallets sold by a Southeast Asian reseller called CryptoBilis were secretly tampered with. A hidden chip inside the device could record the user’s 24-word recovery phrase during setup and send it out over a mobile LTE connection using an embedded eSIM.
• The investigation is still ongoing to find out who tampered with the devices and where it happened in the supply chain.
• The investigation follows reports last week that Ledger users in Southeast Asia had suffered fund losses. Third-party estimates have placed the suspected losses at more than $80 million, but Ledger has not confirmed the total amount or the number of affected users.
• On Wednesday, MediaMarktSaturn announced that it would suspend sales of Ledger devices with immediate effect after a user published pictures of a device reportedly purchased at MediaMarkt that appeared to contain an unauthorized implant.
• At the time of writing and based on publicly available information, there is no indication that devices bought directly from Ledger are affected.

“Energy prices were a major factor in the rising inflation in the US figures this week.” – Wednesday, 14 October 2026 

• September brought little relief to the accelerating cost of living, as consumer prices increased again and kept the inflation rate well above the Fed target of 2%.
• The CPI rose a seasonally adjusted 0.6% for the month, putting the 12-month rate at 3.7%. Stripping out volatile food and energy costs, the core CPI rose 0.3% for the month and was up 2.6% on an annual basis, compared with respective estimates of 0.2% and 2.5%.
• Traders raised the Polymarket odds of a rate hike at the October FOMC meeting to 48% after the CPI release, but the odds have since decreased again to 15%, with roughly 85% of traders expecting the Fed to keep rates steady in October. Interestingly, the chances of a rate hike in October took a dive during the night into Friday as Kevin Warsh spoke at the IMF annual meeting in Bangkok.

Crypto Shows Resilience Despite Recent Crypto-Specific Concerns 

Bitcoin and the overall crypto market traded lower this week amid the ongoing geopolitical conflict and rising inflation figures in the US. Bitcoin is trading at $82K at the time of writing, with Ethereum just below $2.5K. The crypto market took a dive after Wednesday’s US inflation data release but managed to find a temporary bottom on Thursday after the release of the producer price index, which came in a lot hotter than the market forecasted. 

The US stock indices show a similar picture as the inflation data on Wednesday also led to a sell-off in the stock market. Gold bottomed on Wednesday afternoon and is up more than 2.5% since, trading back at last week’s levels, managing to hold the $4K level as support and eyeing higher levels towards the $4.3K region. 

Looking at the crypto market, there are some projects that managed to stay in the green over the past few days, with TAO, ZRO, NEAR and ARB all up around 5-10% over the past week. PUMP, LIT and ATOM, on the other hand, are down by double-digit percentages. Celestia (TIA) is up significantly this week as one of the best-performing crypto assets in the top 100 by market capitalization.

BTC Manages to Hold Above the All ETFs Cost Basis 

In recent weeks, Bitcoin managed to reclaim key investor cost bases despite the macro pressure and crypto-specific concerns such as the quantum/AI fears and the Ledger incident. BTC is currently trading just above the all ETF cost basis, which sits at roughly $82K, a price level that many market participants are closely watching. As uncertainty is likely to increase in the coming weeks before the midterms, it will be key to watch how BTC and the crypto market generally behave in this current regime of high uncertainty, geopolitical tension, inflation concerns and high yields. While its resilience and the recent recovery are certainly encouraging signs, the situation demands patience, and many market participants are closely monitoring the situation as many assets are currently trading around key levels.

50%+ of All BTC Remain in Addresses With No Known Attribution & More Onchain News 

Since the launch of the spot ETFs, the holder structure for Bitcoin has changed dramatically and become much more institutionalized. But still, when looking at the total supply in circulation, more than half of all BTC are still sitting in addresses with no known attribution. This shows that, despite the rapid institutionalization in recent years and the various ever-growing centralized exchanges, a large portion of all BTC still remains in the hands of individuals holding the asset in self-custody.

We talked about the potential POLY token of Polymarket a couple of times over the past two years. In recent weeks, Polymarket’s CEO renewed hints about a token, and airdrop speculation once again became a main topic on social platforms. Speaking at TOKEN2049 in Singapore, Shayne Coplan (Polymarket CEO) said the company was exploring an onchain asset with real programmable utility tied to its platform economy but provided no launch timeline or details. 

In the Solana universe, Anza announced that the Alpenglow consensus upgrade is scheduled to go live on Solana mainnet-beta on October 21. The upgrade will replace the existing TowerBFT consensus mechanism with Votor, aiming to reduce transaction finality from approximately 12.8 seconds to 150 milliseconds. Under the new mechanism, validators will exchange votes directly instead of submitting them as onchain transactions, potentially causing a significant decline in reported transaction totals that include validator votes. Alpenglow was previously activated on testnet on September 24 and devnet on September 25.

Another Week With Spot ETF Outflows? 

Last week, the crypto spot ETFs closed the week with net outflows. The Ether spot ETFs have had only one day of net inflows over the past couple of weeks, and this week does not look much better, as Wednesday saw large outflows across the board again. 

Strategy bought another 250 BTC over the course of last week at an average price of $86.2K, and BitMine added 12.5K Ether to its holdings after its holdings crossed the magical 6M Ether mark last week, bringing it closer to its 5% goal. BitMine noted that the company is largely finished buying ETH, suggesting future purchases may slow.

Crypto Markets Continue to Stay in Greed 

The Crypto Fear and Greed Index is still in greed territory (63) this week, even higher than last week. That was kind of surprising, especially given how sentiment on social platforms felt on Wednesday, when it seemed like the world was ending as BTC traded below $80K for a short time. It seems like yesterday’s quick recovery managed to keep sentiment afloat. The CNN Fear and Greed Index, on the other hand, dropped back into fear territory this week after the sharp drop on Wednesday following the US CPI data release.

The AAII Sentiment Survey reveals a mixed picture this week: 39% feel bullish, 42% bearish, and 19% neutral about the US stock market over the coming six months. Looking at historical averages, the number of bearish members continues to be well above average, while the number of neutral members is historically very low. The market continues to be divided into two camps, bears and bulls, with not much in between.

• RWA market capitalization on Solana grew from about $700M to $4.3B over the past year. – Link 
• Binance US is seeking to raise up to $100M in a private funding round at a target valuation of approximately $1B to expand its US operations. – Link

Will the Crypto Resilience Continue? 

The midterm elections in the US are coming up in less than three weeks, and the FOMC meeting is scheduled for the last week of October. There is already a lot of uncertainty in the market due to the ongoing geopolitical conflicts and rising inflation. High yields and the upcoming midterms are adding to this uncertainty. The resilience of crypto assets is noteworthy, as crypto-specific headwinds have added to the macro pressure in recent weeks. Quantum fears and the Ledger incident shook up market sentiment but did not really affect prices. 

Prices holding up despite negative news is generally viewed as a positive sign and often appears in early bull markets, when participants’ sentiment is still stuck in the bear market while prices recover. Bitcoin’s return to net profit-taking supports the recovery case despite the persistent headwinds. The realized profits of BTC holders again exceed their losses, marking a shift from the recent period of investor stress. This pattern was also observable during the early stages of the last two bull markets, in 2019 and 2023, as the chart below shows.

Below, you can find some of the key data releases and events to watch out for next week. 

Monday, 19 October 2026 

China – GDP 

China – Unemployment Rate 

China – NBS Press Conference 

Thursday, 22 October 2026 

Switzerland – SNB Monetary Policy Assessment 

USA – Initial Jobless Claims 

Friday, 23 October 2026 

Japan – CPI 

USA – Michigan 1-Year Inflation Expectation