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CoinCatch Weekly Market Review & Outlook (October 10–16)
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2025-10-16 | 20m
This week, the market experienced one of its most dramatic single-day drops on October 10th, triggered by an unexpected announcement from former President Donald Trump threatening to impose 100% tariffs on China . This sparked a global risk-off sentiment, leading to a massive liquidation cascade. The event led to the largest nominal liquidation in crypto history, with approximately $19 billion in leveraged positions being forcibly closed within 24 hours. Despite this downturn, some analysts and market participants remain cautiously optimistic for the remainder of Q4 2025, with potential positive catalysts on the horizon. Meanwhile, the President and his family have gained more than $1 billion in pre-tax profits from crypto ventures, including digital trading cards, meme coins, stablecoins, WLFI (WLFI) tokens and DeFi platforms. BitMine has added $417 million worth of Ethereum to its corporate reserves, reinforcing its position as the largest public holder of the asset. Stablecoins support cryptocurrency liquidity during market crashes, market capitalization reaches 307 billion.
Market Overview
BTC
&
ETH
: BTC fell 8.42% this week. ETH fell 8.78% this week. From October 10–16, 2025, Bitcoin and Ethereum experienced a tumultuous week marked by geopolitical tensions and a historic liquidation event. Triggered by U.S. President Donald Trump announcing 100% tariffs on Chinese imports, the crypto market saw over $19 billion in leveraged positions liquidated on October 10. During this period, Bitcoin's price dropped to around $104,782 before recovering some ground to hover near $111,000 later in the week. Ethereum's price also declined, falling from over $4,300 on October 10 to approximately $4,040 by October 16. While the crash was a significant setback, some analysts noted Bitcoin's resilience in holding the $111,000 area, pointing to potential strength amidst market uncertainty. Institutional demand was evident through strong inflows into Bitcoin ETFs, with one day recording the second-largest inflow in history. Its dominance also reached a new cycle high of 58.91%. Ethereum followed Bitcoin's trend, experiencing a drop before bouncing back above $4,000. ETH also saw strong institutional inflows into its ETFs, fueled by interest in smart contracts and DeFi applications.
Altcoins: Altcoins suffered significantly during the liquidation cascade, with some seeing steep initial drawdowns far greater than BTC or ETH. Specific examples of initial large drops included HYPE (-54%), DOGE (-62%), and AVAX (-70%), though some recovered slightly later. While capital flowed back toward Bitcoin as a perceived safer asset immediately following the crash, many analysts still anticipate an "altcoin season" and potential for altcoin ETFs in the broader Q4 2025 landscape. The market is currently characterized by a sharp decline in investor sentiment, with the Fear and Greed Index hitting a six-month low of 31, indicating "Extreme Fear" following a major liquidation event; however, this is counterbalanced by strong underlying capital inflows, as evidenced by a record-breaking total stablecoin supply that has surged to $304 billion, signaling that capital is moving to the sidelines rather than exiting the ecosystem.
ETF: During the week of October 10–16, 2025, the ETF market was marked by record asset growth driven by financial advisors, high trading volumes despite market volatility, and significant developments in the crypto ETF space. U.S. ETF assets surged past $11 trillion, while active and crypto ETFs saw considerable attention. The U.S. ETF market surpassed $11 trillion in assets during the first half of 2025, fueled by $511 billion in new capital inflows. BTC and ETH ETF Inflows: Despite a market downturn triggered by historic liquidations, spot Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs rebounded with combined net inflows of $340 million on Tuesday, October 14, following a $755 million outflow on Monday. BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) had a remarkable quarter, attracting a record $2.63 billion in Q3 2025, reflecting robust institutional demand. October was a pivotal month for crypto ETFs, with the SEC facing decisions on 16 applications for altcoins like Solana (SOL), XRP, and Litecoin.
The SEC was due to make decisions on five Solana ETF applications from issuers like Grayscale, VanEck, and Bitwise between October 10 and 16, with potential long-term price targets of $800–$1,000 upon approval. Speculation rose around XRP ETF approvals, with decisions expected between October 18 and 25. Analysts projected potential inflows of $3 billion to $15 billion from institutions.
Macro Data: The market was influenced by ongoing U.S.-China trade tensions and a U.S. government shutdown. The shutdown delayed key data releases, clouding the near-term outlook for growth and inflation. Upcoming key economic indicators for October include the CPI data (Oct 15), US Fed Rate Decision (Oct 29), GDP data (Oct 30), and PCE data (Oct 31). The traditional stock market also reacted negatively to trade war news. On October 10, the S&P 500's total market capitalization dropped 2.7% ($1.6 trillion). Big tech stocks were particularly affected, with Amazon and Tesla experiencing some of the largest losses.
As of October 15, 2025, the gold is trading at $4226.06 US Dollars per ounce. The S&P 500 Index is at 6,671.06 points. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is 46,253.31 points. The Nasdaq Composite Index settles at 22,670.08 points.
Stablecoins: The overall market capitalization of
stablecoins is currently US$307.8 billion, and stablecoins such as USDC and USDe continue to attract market attention.
Gas Fees: Throughout the week of October 10–16, 2025, cryptocurrency gas fees fluctuated significantly, driven by market volatility and underlying network activity. The Ethereum network, in particular, experienced variations in gas fees, a direct result of the market turmoil caused by geopolitical news and a historic liquidation event earlier in the week. As of October 16, the average gas fee was 0.12 Gwei.
Weekly Trending Coins
Trending crypto sectors for the week of October 10–16, 2025, included
DeFi,
Layer 2s, and
Memecoins, all of which were heavily influenced by the period's market volatility. Institutional interest in ETFs also continued to be a significant driver of attention.
Decentralized Finance (DeFi): The DeFi sector experienced sharp losses during the market crash on October 10, with some tokens dropping by as much as 40%. Despite the downturn, some legacy DeFi protocols, like Synthetix, began showing strong recovery, with tokens like
SNX surging over 100% after the crash due to plans for a Q4 2025 launch of a decentralized perpetual contract exchange.
Layer 2s (L2s): The L2 sector saw mixed performance. While general network fee volumes remained muted due to the broader market cooldown, projects continued to build. Projects like Bitcoin Hyper sought to enhance Bitcoin's L2 capabilities. Meanwhile, Synthetix's plan to move its perp DEX back to the mainnet represented a notable shift away from L2 reliance for that specific protocol.
Memecoins: The memecoin sector experienced extreme volatility, with popular tokens like Dogecoin (DOGE) and
Pepecoin (PEPE) being hit hard during the crash. Trading volumes surged on platforms like Pump.fun due to celebrity and social media hype, indicating continued speculative interest, though most new memecoins struggled to sustain momentum.
Crypto ETFs: This sector continued to trend significantly, driven by institutional interest. Spot Bitcoin ETFs saw substantial inflows, and speculation mounted regarding potential SEC decisions on altcoin ETFs, especially for Solana (SOL) and XRP. Bitwise also launched a Celestia Staking ETP on Euronext Paris.
AI Layer 1s: The emergence of AI-powered Layer 1 blockchains, such as IONIX CHAIN, also gained attention. IONIX CHAIN, which launched its presale during the week, highlighted the ongoing trend of leveraging AI to address blockchain scalability and efficiency.
Weekly Market Focus
US-China Trade Tensions and Their Ripple Effects on Global Crypto Markets in 2025
The 2025 U.S.-China trade war marked a turning point for global financial markets, exposing the crypto sector's vulnerability to geopolitical risk premiums. On October 10–12, 2025, former U.S. President Donald Trump's announcement of a 100% tariff on Chinese imports and export restrictions on critical software triggered a historic $19 billion liquidation in the crypto market Crypto Markets. Bitcoin plummeted from over $125,000 to below $102,000, while Ethereum and altcoins like
Solana and
XRP lost 12–50% of their value in a matter of days. This event underscored how geopolitical tensions can amplify systemic risks in leveraged crypto markets, where overextended positions and weak support levels create cascading failures.
Geopolitical risk premiums-the additional return investors demand for holding assets exposed to political instability-surged in 2025 as trade tensions escalated. According to a report by Bloomberg, the U.S.-China tariff war drove a 20% increase in risk premiums for digital assets, pushing Bitcoin's beta coefficient (a measure of volatility relative to the S&P 500) to 1.3, compared to 0.8 in 2024. This shift reflects crypto's growing correlation with traditional markets, where macroeconomic shocks now spill over more rapidly. For instance, the S&P 500's 2% decline during the October 2025 crisis mirrored crypto's sell-off, illustrating a synchronized risk-off environment.
Bitcoin ETF Demand Surges After Largest Crypto Flush Event in History
Source: SoSoValue
Crypto ETFs showed clear signs of institutional confidence returning. On October 14, spot Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs recorded net inflows of $338 million according to SoSoValue data. Bitcoin spot ETFs brought in $102.6 million in net inflows. Fidelity’s FBTC led with $133 million while Bitwise’s BITB added $8 million. ARK and 21Shares’ ARKB gained $6.8 million during the same period.
BlackRock’s IBIT and Valkyrie’s BRRR saw outflows totaling $44.85 million. Despite these outflows, the overall trend pointed to growing institutional interest.
Ethereum ETFs performed even better with inflows of $236.22 million. Fidelity’s FETH led again with $154.62 million. Grayscale, VanEck, Franklin Templeton, and Bitwise also reported strong demand from investors.
The crash triggered the largest liquidation event in crypto history on a nominal basis. Bitcoin open interest dropped from $70 billion to $58 billion in a single day. This represented a decline from 560,000 BTC to 481,000 BTC in futures positions. The $12 billion drop marked the largest single-day deleveraging event in USD terms. In BTC terms, it was the second-largest on record behind only the March 2020 COVID crash. Bitcoin was trading at $5,000 during that earlier event compared to $122,000 now.
The Chicago Mercantile Exchange saw little change during the selloff. CME open interest held steady at around 145,000 BTC throughout the volatility. This stability suggests institutional investors on CME weren’t driving the crash. The data shows crypto-native traders caused the crash rather than traditional finance participants. Past deleveraging events of this size have often marked market bottoms. Examples include the 2020 COVID crash, the 2021 China mining ban, and the FTX collapse in November 2022.
Fed Chair Powell Says Pre-Shutdown Data Shows U.S. Economy Running Hotter Than Expected
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said Tuesday that early government data before the recent shutdown showed the U.S. economy running hotter than policymakers expected, warning that growth remains firm even as the central bank inches toward ending its balance-sheet reductions and considers more rate cuts.
Speaking in Philadelphia at the National Association for Business Economics conference, Powell made it clear the Fed is nearing its target for “ample” bank reserves and hinted that the tightening cycle could soon pause. The remarks came as investors weigh how far the Fed can go before risking job losses while keeping inflation in check.
“Our long-stated plan is to stop balance-sheet runoff when reserves are somewhat above the level we judge consistent with ample reserve conditions,” Powell said. “We may approach that point in coming months, and we are closely monitoring a wide range of indicators to inform this decision.” He said the central bank hasn’t set a date but noted that liquidity measures suggest the end of balance-sheet reduction is close.
Balance-sheet reductions: It typically refers to a monetary policy implemented by central banks to reduce the size of their massive balance sheets. This practice is also colloquially referred to as "quantitative tightening" (QT).
Stock/cryptocurrency markets: Generally considered bearish. Reduced liquidity means less "cheap money" in the market, potentially weakening investor demand for risky assets such as stocks and cryptocurrencies.
Simply put, the core meaning of this news is that the Federal Reserve is preparing to "step on the brakes" and stop its "quantitative tightening" policy of withdrawing liquidity from the market, but at the same time it cannot commit to faster interest rate cuts because of the overheating economy.
Key Market Data Highlights
The Trump Family Made Over $1B from Crypto
Acording to a recent Financial Times report, U.S President Donald Trump’s wealth has seen a significant rise from ongoing crypto-related businesses, namely through digital assets such as the presidential meme coins and tokens from World Liberty Financial. The report stated that the calculation of income coming from crypto projects only includes realized profits. Overall, the President and his family have gained more than $1 billion in pre-tax profits from crypto ventures, including digital trading cards, meme coins, stablecoins, WLFI (WLFI) tokens and DeFi platforms.
A separate report by Forbes earlier in September revealed that the President’s net worth has increased by $3 billion in a year. When asked by Financial Times whether the $1 billion figure was accurate, the President’s son, Eric Trump said that the true figure was “probably more” than the number that was calculated. According to FT’s findings, most of the earnings come from the WLFI token. Initially, the token was not tradeable by investors. That is until September this year when it was launched for public trading. The WLFI token has generated about $550 million, despite having fallen by 57% from its peak at the beginning of September. In 2024, the President declared that he received a personal income of $57.3 million from World Liberty Financial in his latest financial disclosure.
BitMine Adds $417M to Ethereum Treasury as Tom Lee Doubles Down on $10k ETH By Year-End
BitMine has added $417 million worth of Ethereum to its corporate reserves, reinforcing its position as the largest public holder of the asset. On-chain data reported by Lookonchain shows the company purchased 104,336 ETH over the past seven hours, distributing the tokens across three new wallets through transfers from Kraken and BitGo. Following the latest acquisition, BitMine’s total Ethereum holdings have surpassed 3.03 million Ethereum, representing more than 2.5% of the total supply. The company has accumulated over 300,000 ETH in the past week alone, taking advantage of recent price dips to expand its reserves.
The move aligns with the firm’s continued strategy of aggressively buying into market pullbacks, described by its Chairman Tom Lee as buying assets at a “substantial discount to the future.” Reaching the 3 million ETH mark now puts BitMine halfway toward its long-term goal of eventually controlling 5% of all ETH in circulation, a level that would give it meaningful influence over network liquidity and staking infrastructure.
Stablecoins Hold up Crypto Liquidity Amidst Market Crash, with Market Capitalization Reaches 307 Billion
In a recent report, the on-chain analysis platform highlighted the growth of stablecoins and their ability to hold up despite crashes in the market. In fact, it may be the hedge that holds up crypto liquidity in spite of market volatility seen in other tokens.
On Oct. 14, the crypto market experienced a major crash that led to several major tokens like Bitcoin and Ethereum plummeting below established thresholds. Not only that, ahead of the Fed Chair speech, whales were seen powering through by increasing short positions on a number of altcoins as they anticipated a market crash.
However, despite these setbacks, the stablecoin market remained strong. According to the post, Tether’s stablecoin USDT Tether has shown increasing growth, rising to $180.6 billion in total market cap. Meanwhile, Circle’s USDC managed to rack up $76.1 billion in value on-chain.
“Despite the recent crypto crash, stablecoin inflows remain one of the clearest signs that this is neither the end of crypto nor the end of this cycle,” noted Matrixport in its latest post.
Within just this year, Tether has minted about $42 billion worth of stablecoins. Meanwhile, Circle has minted another $32 billion. In total, the two stablecoin issuers have managed to generate $74 billion in fresh inflows that support crypto market liquidity.
Source: DefiLlama
CoinCatch New Listings
CoinCatch Weekly Event
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from October 11, 2025 (UTC+8) – October 17, 2025 (UTC+8) will be eligible for 100% liquidation grants if they upload a screenshot of the liquidation record to the Google Form during the event period. (Up to 50 USDT per person)
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Token Unlocks Next Week
Tokenomist data indicates that from October 16 – October 22, 2025, several major token unlocks are scheduled. Some of them are:
-
ARB will unlock approximately $30.31 million worth of tokens over the next 7 days, representing 1.99% of the circulating supply.
-
ZK will unlock approximately $6.57 million worth of tokens over the next 7 days, representing 3.49% of the circulating supply.
-
W will unlock approximately $4.03 million worth of tokens over the next seven days, representing 1.06% of the circulating supply.
-
ZRO will unlock approximately $47.05 million worth of tokens over the next seven days, representing 7.86% of the circulating supply.
-
KAITO will unlock approximately $9.14 million worth of tokens over the next seven days, representing 3.06% of the circulating supply.
References:
CoinGecko. (2025).
Cryptocurrency categories and market data.
https://www.coingecko.com/en/categories
CoinGlass. (2025).
Liquidation data and market analytics.
https://www.coinglass.com/LiquidationData
CoinMarketCap. (2025).
Cryptocurrency prices, charts, and market capitalizations.
https://coinmarketcap.com/
Etherscan. (2025).
Ethereum gas tracker.
https://etherscan.io/gastracker
Farside Investors. (2025).
Bitcoin and Ethereum ETF flow tracker.
https://farside.co.uk/btc/
RootData. (2025).
Crypto fundraising and venture capital database.
https://www.rootdata.com/Fundraising
Tokenomist. (2025).
Token vesting and unlock analytics.
https://tokenomist.ai/
Milk Road. (2025, August 21).
Ethereum gas fees. Milkroad.
https://milkroad.com/ethereum/gas/
Ainvest. (2025, October 15).
US-China trade tensions and their ripple effects on global crypto markets in 2025.
https://www.ainvest.com/news/china-trade-tensions-ripple-effects-global-crypto-markets-2025-2510/
CoinCentral. (2025, October 16).
Bitcoin ETF demand surges
after
largest crypto flush event in history.
https://coincentral.com/bitcoin-etf-demand-surges-after-largest-crypto-flush-event-in-history/
Crypto.News. (2025, October 15).
Matrixport: Stablecoins hold up crypto liquidity amidst market crash.
https://crypto.news/matrixport-stablecoins-hold-up-crypto-liquidity-amidst-market-crash/
Crypto.News. (2025, October 16).
The Trump family made over 1B from crypto: report.
https://crypto.news/the-trump-family-made-over-1b-from-crypto-report/
Yahoo Finance. (2025, October 15).
US
seizes 15B bitcoin, charges.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/us-seizes-15b-bitcoin-charges-080033270.html
Mitrade. (2025, October 15).
Fed chair Powell says pre-shutdown data shows U.S.
economy
running hotter than expected.
https://www.mitrade.com/insights/news/live-news/article-3-1194498-20251015
CoinCatch Team
Disclaimer:
Digital asset prices carry high market risk and price volatility. You should carefully consider your investment experience, financial situation, investment objectives, and risk tolerance. CoinCatch is not responsible for any losses that may occur. This article should not be considered financi
al advice.
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