The month of October has ended, leaving crypto investors with a sense of relief. Here’s the state of the market, and what might come next.
According to data from CoinGecko, the global cryptocurrency market capitalization is now at $1.06 trillion. Even though it’s down 61% from last year, it rose $80 billion in the month of October.
The big winner of the month is Dogecoin, which jumped by 107% in the last 30 days. DOGE is Elon Musk’s sympathy memecoin, and the token experienced massive gains following the billionaire’s acquisition of Twitter. DOGE also replaced Cardano’s token ADA as the 6th largest token by market capitalization.
Bitcoin was up 6% in the month, and is trading around $20,400. However, BTC underperformed many other coins in the market, with Ethereum winning the BTC vs. ETH battle in October. The price of ETH hit a low of $1,209 on Oct.13, before a rapid rise to a monthly high of $1,652.
The underperformance of Bitcoin caused the ETH/BTC ratio to go up by 10%. Still, the dominance of Bitcoin, which measures its share of the total market value, only fell by 0.5% during October, giving signs that the “altcoin season” has not yet come.
October has also been a month with a huge amount of hacks, and some people even dared to call it “Hacktober.” According to data from security firm Peckshield, there were 44 exploits worth $760.2 million in Oct. 2022. From that amount, almost $100 million were returned, accounting for a net loss of $657.2 million. The stolen funds this year are worth $3 billion, already double than the entire of 2021, with two more months left in the year.
With the month over, many analysts and investors are looking into the next catalysts for the markets. First, on Wednesday, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), the monetary policymaking body of the Federal Reserve System, will have a meeting to determine the hike in interest rates.
Additionally, the midterm elections are scheduled for Nov 8, and the results will be watched closely to see which candidates will take a seat to regulate the cryptocurrency industry.
