Crypto Markets Look To Finish Strong After Sideways October

After trading sideways through much of October, crypto markets had their best week since August with the top three digital assets leading the way — Bitcoin is up 8.9%, Ether is up 22.1%, and Binance’s BNB is up 12.5% in the past week, according to The Defiant Terminal.

Among the top 100 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization, KLAY, the token of the Layer 1 blockchain Klaytn, had the strongest showing, surging over 90% in the past week.

Dogecoin, likely due to speculation that Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter would lead the entrepreneur to integrate the token with the platform, jumped 42% in that same time frame.

While crypto was highly correlated with major stock indices like the S&P 500 during the first half of the year, leaders in market capitalization terms like BTC and ETH have outperformed the index since markets bottomed in mid-June.

ETH in Teal, BTC in Blue, S&P in Orange

That said, the correlation remains solid — with a 3.5% gain, the S&P 500 had a strong week overall despite tech giants like Amazon and Meta dropping by double-digit percentages as quarterly earnings reported lower-than-expected growth.

DeFi Tokens Rally

Four of the top five DeFi protocols in terms of total value locked (TVL) ended the week up at least 6%, with Uniswap’s UNI leading the pack with a 14.7% gain, according to The Defiant Terminal. Lending giant MakerDAO was the only loser among the five as the decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) approved a controversial governance vote.

Looking to the week ahead, the U.S. Federal Reserve will next meet on Nov. 2 with the CME FedWatch Tool predicting an 81% chance of another 75 basis point hike.