Crypto Market Recap Oct 18, 2026: Bitcoin Leads a Modest Advance

What Moved

A positive but unspectacular session: total market capitalisation closed at $2.87T, +0.7% over 24 hours.

Bitcoin set the tone, rising +1.0% to $82,467 while the median large asset moved -0.4%; its share of the market rose to 57.8%. Ethereum gained 0.5% to $2,421.

Breadth was split — 919 assets up, 1428 down — with 50.0% of the hundred largest closing higher. The index move came from the large caps more than the field.

Pepe (PEPE) was the day's strongest mover at +3.7%, ahead of XMR (+3.1%). At the other end, ​​Stable (STABLE) fell 5.5%, with AERO (-5.0%) close behind. By sector, Privacy led (+1.4%) while Storage & Compute trailed (-0.5%).

Volume and Leverage

Volume was the story: $40.4B of spot turnover over the day, +32.9% on the previous session. Spot on centralised exchanges accounted for $39.6B, on-chain swaps $1.54B and derivatives $67.4B.

Liquidations were contained at $180M, most of it longs ($109M against $70.5M of shorts). Open interest across the venues we track is $66.1B.

Sentiment

The Coinmico Fear & Greed index sits at 62, in greed, up 8 points from yesterday and 41 a week ago.