Altcoins rally on thin trading as bitcoin holds below $83,500 — SkimNews
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- CoinDesk 80 index gained roughly 3% over 24 hours, more than double the 1.2% rise in the CoinDesk 5, as bitcoin traded below $83,500 after touching above $84,000 on Sunday.
- Altcoin liquidity has continued to erode since the Oct. 10, 2025 flash crash, according to CoinDesk research, even as bitcoin and ether order-book depth has rebuilt to pre-crash levels in dollar terms.
- U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs recorded $681 million of net outflows last week — the largest weekly haul since June — with most of the selling concentrated on Wednesday and Thursday, per SoSoValue.
- Spot ether ETFs have gone nine straight days without an inflow, the longest streak since June, underscoring the institutional retreat from majors while small tokens rally.
- NEAR posted the freshest positioning of any major token: price up 10%, open interest up 17% (~6% more open contracts), and the second-highest OI-adjusted CVD among majors, putting price at its highest since December.
- Starknet (STRK) rose 76% over the past week as the network weighs leaving Ethereum to become a standalone quantum-resistant layer-1, though it gave back 7.7% on Monday on profit-taking.
- LayerZero (ZRO) jumped 21% to $2.41, its highest since May 2025 and pushing market cap near $1 billion; the article describes the move as a technical bounce from oversold levels rather than news-driven.
- Zcash (ZEC) climbed while appearing in the laundering trail of the Ledger reseller supply-chain attack, where CryptoBilis losses are estimated at $86–93 million and at least one tampered device has been confirmed.
Why it matters: Retail-driven altcoin speculation is diverging from institutional flows: altcoin liquidity has thinned since last October's flash crash even as BTC and ETH order books rebuilt, so the 3% surge in the CoinDesk 80 is riding on a fragile market. With $681 million exiting spot bitcoin ETFs in one week and ether ETFs logging nine straight outflow days, the rally's foundation is leverage and churn — 24-hour futures volume surged 81% to $126 billion while open interest rose just 2.44%.
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