Oct 26 Crypto Recap: BTC Drops 1.3%, CAP Surges 36%

Bitcoin traded at $79,835.3 on Monday morning, October 26, 2026 at 09:10 WIB, down 1.32% over 24 hours on $6,524 million in futures volume on Binance USDT-M. Ethereum fell harder, down 2.04% to $2,315.7 on $5,496 million in volume. The weakness dragged nearly every major crypto asset into the red this morning.

Solana slipped 1.26% to $101.22, BNB edged down 0.64% to $739.66, and XRP dropped 1.18% to $1.2923. ETH turned out to be the weakest of the top five, while BTC and the rest of the majors held up relatively better.

CAP jumps 36%, led by smaller tokens

Outside the big five, smaller altcoins were busy. CAPUSDT surged 36.42% on $221 million in volume, the day's top gainer. Behind it came APRUSDT up 24.68% ($528 million in volume), ERAUSDT up 18.70% ($52 million), DODOXUSDT up 9.63% ($61 million), and IRYSUSDT up 7.25% ($313 million).

APR's $528 million volume is notably large for a token outside the top five, actually higher than BNB's volume. That suggests its rally is backed by genuinely heavy trading activity rather than a thin, low-liquidity move.

The biggest decliners of the day

On the losing side, QUSDT fell hardest, down 28.09% on $144 million in volume. TUSDT followed with a 27.24% drop ($244 million), then LIGHTUSDT down 25.51% ($61 million), ORDERUSDT down 19.95% ($192 million), and GTCUSDT down 15.92% ($50 million).

Drops of 25 to 28% in a single day for tokens trading hundreds of millions of dollars are far sharper than the correction seen in BTC or ETH. Volatility in these smaller tokens is running well ahead of the broader crypto market today.

Funding rate: who's paying whom

Funding rate is a fee traders pay every 8 hours in perpetual futures markets, depending on which side, long or short, is more dominant. Positive funding means longs are paying shorts, usually a sign of bullish positioning. Negative funding flips that, with shorts paying longs.

Today's most positive funding sits with CAPUSDT at 0.0453% per 8 hours, consistent with its price jump. JCTUSDT and APRUSDT follow at 0.0122% and 0.0115% respectively.

The more striking numbers are on the negative side. BTWUSDT sits at -0.6564% per 8 hours, far more extreme than anything else on the list. GTCUSDT is at -0.3758% and TUSDT at -0.1820%. GTC and T are both among today's biggest losers, yet their deeply negative funding shows short positions have kept piling up even after the price crash, rather than easing off. Traders holding shorts are paying a premium to longs, a sign many still expect further downside even after a steep drop.

Open interest and long-short ratios on BTC and ETH

BTC open interest stands at $7.51 billion, down 1.8% over the past week. Ethereum's open interest also fell, down 1.9% to $5.36 billion. Open interest is the total value of futures contracts still outstanding. When it declines alongside falling prices, that usually points to positions being closed, either from profit-taking or forced liquidations, rather than fresh capital entering the market.

On the account side, 69% of accounts holding BTC futures positions on Binance are long, with a long-to-short ratio of 2.24 to 1. For ETH, the tilt is even sharper at 77% long accounts and a 3.33-to-1 ratio. In other words, most retail traders currently holding BTC and ETH futures positions are betting on higher prices, not lower ones.

Taker buy/sell: selling pressure still dominant

The taker buy/sell ratio measures who is more aggressive in executing trades, buyers or sellers. A reading above 1 means buy orders dominate, below 1 means sellers are hitting the bid more aggressively.

Yesterday, BTC's taker buy/sell ratio came in at 0.93, below the neutral line. That lines up with BTC's 1.32% drop over 24 hours, showing sellers were indeed more aggressive than buyers. ETH, meanwhile, sat exactly at 1.00, a neutral reading, even though its price fell harder than BTC's.

That combination is worth noting. Most BTC and ETH accounts are still long, yet aggressive trade flow is skewed toward sellers for BTC and balanced for ETH. That could mean the bulk of long positions are being held passively, while selling pressure is coming from a smaller but more active group of traders.

What it means for traders

A market that's long-heavy while prices keep sliding is worth watching closely, since it raises the risk of a long squeeze, a chain of long liquidations that happens when leveraged positions hit margin calls as prices fall, triggering automatic liquidations that push prices down further and set off more liquidations. One thing to track is how fast BTC and ETH open interest continues to shrink over the next few days, since a sharp additional drop usually signals liquidations are underway.

For smaller altcoins like CAP, APR, and ERA that rallied on high positive funding, the risk of a sharp reversal is elevated since long positions have already piled up and are getting expensive to hold. On the flip side, GTC and T, with deeply negative funding after already crashing, could be candidates for a technical bounce if shorts start covering, though that's not guaranteed.

Traders tracking futures markets should check funding rate alongside taker buy/sell data rather than relying on either alone. Extreme negative funding combined with still-dominant sell flow usually signals selling pressure isn't done yet, while funding drifting back toward neutral often shows up just before a short-term reversal.