Market Overview
Over the past 24 hours, the crypto market rose by 1.4%, and total market capitalization reached $2.92 trillion. At the start of the Asian trading session, the figure even jumped to $2.94 trillion due to stop orders being triggered. Although the dollar strengthened, this was largely due to investors pulling out of European assets, and the likelihood of the Fed tightening policy in October has decreased. Incidentally, this is the fourth consecutive month that the start of the period has looked promising. This is quite logical, as October is historically considered a good month for digital assets.
After the recent lull, cryptocurrencies seem poised to break through local resistance and retest their September highs. Looking at specific coins, Aave (+11.8%), Aptos (+7.2%), and Litecoin (+4.8%) performed the best over the past 24 hours. Meanwhile, Near Protocol (-5.8%), IOTA (-1.3%), and Cosmos (-1.2%) saw slight declines. Overall, the outlook is positive: there are now roughly three times as many coins rising in price as those falling.
Bitcoin is on the verge of a breakout. On Thursday, the price failed to hold above $85,000, but by Friday morning, it had already climbed to the $86,000–$87,000 range, nearly returning to the levels seen at the start of last week. If this breakout occurs, buyers could follow the Fibonacci scenario and drive the price up to $94,000. But everything here depends on U.S. labor market data. A strong report could fuel an upward trend, but overly positive figures would force the market to once again anticipate a Fed rate hike, which would hit risk assets like Bitcoin.
Market Context
The third quarter was truly strong for Bitcoin, with a 42.7% increase. This is the best result since 2017. According to SoSoValue, $6.34 billion was invested in U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs during this period, which is impressive given the $5 billion outflow in the second quarter.
Analysts at Bitwise believe this surge is linked to the fact that the CLARITY Act failed to pass the Senate. Surprisingly, this turned out to be a positive development, as regulation by the SEC and CFTC began to evolve more quickly and in a more favorable manner. However, there is a downside: the current favorable conditions are not enshrined in law, so a new U.S. administration in 2029 could revise everything.
Meanwhile, Citigroup experts are extremely optimistic. They have raised their Bitcoin price forecast for the coming year from $82,000 to $113,000, citing inflows into ETFs and overall macroeconomic trends. The forecast for Ethereum has also been revised upward: from $2,240 to $3,030.
There is also interesting news in the tech sector. Visa, together with the British bank Lloyds, tested round-the-clock payments via the USDC stablecoin. Everything happened quickly: transactions were completed in less than an hour, even on weekends. Another case came from South Korea: Jeonbuk Bank tested international transfers via Solana. They used a private channel so that the amounts and parties involved in the transactions would not appear on the public blockchain.