Smaller altcoins are once again taking the lead in the cryptocurrency market as bitcoin and other major digital assets remain locked in a sideways trading pattern.
Bitway’s native BTW token posted the strongest gains, rising 25% over the past 24 hours. The token has now climbed 170% over the last 30 days.
Bitway is a bitcoin-compatible layer-1 blockchain that uses proof-of-stake consensus and supports decentralized finance (DeFi) infrastructure.
BTW has also become more prominent on social media following the conclusion of Binance Wallet’s “Booster Season 5” campaign on Oct. 2. The campaign provided rewards for deposits and may have helped increase retail participation in the token.
The gains are not isolated to BTW. Several other smaller cryptocurrencies have also posted strong advances. Filecoin’s FIL rose 12% in the past 24 hours, while LayerZero’s ZRO gained 10%. Both assets are up 50% or more over the past four weeks. Midnight’s NIGHT added 8% over the same 24-hour period.
Meanwhile, SKY, VVV and DASH were the weakest performers among the 100 largest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization.
Bitcoin Remains Range-Bound
Bitcoin has continued to trade without a clear directional breakout. BTC was around $85,900 at the time of writing after touching levels close to $85,000 earlier in the day.
The broader quoted market data showed bitcoin at $86,199.35 and ether at $2,712.86.
Alex Kuptsikevich, chief market analyst at TheFxPro, said a break below important support could open the way toward lower levels.
“A break below $84K would signal a victory for the bears, and a break below the recent local lows at $83K would confirm this with even greater certainty. In this scenario, the leading cryptocurrency could fall to $80K fairly quickly,” he said.
Futures Market Shows Less Heat
Bitcoin derivatives positioning has remained broadly stable. Open interest slipped only slightly to $21.9 billion from $22.0 billion.
Funding rates have cooled, with rates now generally ranging between 0% and 5% annualized across trading venues. That compares with the earlier 4% to 10% range.
The three-month annualized basis remained around 5% to 6%. Taken together, the figures suggest that positioning has settled after Friday’s buildup. Leveraged long exposure remains, but funding costs have eased.
Options activity remains tilted toward calls. The 24-hour put/call volume ratio was 62/38 in favor of calls, while the one-week 25-delta skew remained negative at roughly -2%.
The at-the-money term structure remained in contango, with front-end implied volatility around 24% to 25% and rising to approximately 39% by late 2027.
CoinGlass reported $163 million in liquidations over the previous 24 hours. Long positions represented 63% of the liquidations, compared with 27% for shorts.
Bitcoin accounted for $51 million of the liquidated positions, while other assets accounted for $21 million and ether for $19 million. The Binance liquidation heatmap showed $87,150 as a key level to watch if BTC begins moving higher.
Privacy Tokens Remain Strong
Privacy-focused assets were among the session’s better performers. Monero (XMR) increased 1.9% to $557, while Zcash (ZEC) gained 2.5% and moved back above $1,350.
The strength in privacy tokens comes as demand for anonymous layer-1 assets remains firm amid changing macroeconomic sentiment.
NEAR Protocol was another notable winner. NEAR jumped 4.5% over 24 hours to $5.25 as buying interest returned after last week’s sharp market-wide pullback.
Rain Protocol moved in the opposite direction. RAIN dropped 5.6% as selling pressure returned following recent supply emissions and wider profit-taking among speculative low-cap tokens.
Large DeFi cryptocurrencies remained subdued. Uniswap (UNI) declined 1.4% to $8.89, while Chainlink (LINK) slipped 1.2% to $14.
Sui (SUI) also weakened, falling 3.2% over 24 hours to around $1.20. The layer-1 asset continues to absorb the volatility seen across recent trading sessions.
The market is therefore showing a clear divergence: smaller altcoins are attracting fresh buying interest, while bitcoin remains unable to establish a sustained breakout from its current range.
