Altcoins Throw a Party While Bitcoin Sits This One Out 🎉

Altcoins outperformed bitcoin on Thursday as Celestia surged 16%, injective climbed 7.7% and layerzero added 7.3%, while BTC hovered near $82,100 with little change since midnight UTC. Bitcoin dipped to roughly $81,600 around 03:30 UTC before recovering, holding comfortably above Thursday's brief break below $80,000, its first sub-$80,000 print in a month. The CoinDesk 100 Index (CD100) finished with more than four in five members in positive territory, and CoinMarketCap's Altcoin Season index rose to 60 from 50 a day earlier.

Ether (ETH) edged up about 0.5% near $2,450, the CoinDesk 80 (CD80) gained 0.46% and the bitcoin-heavy CoinDesk 5 (CD5) was flat. Asian equities steadied after the previous session's sell-off, with South Korea's Kospi closing 2.05% higher and Japan's Nikkei up 1.39%, while S&P 500 futures were little changed after the index snapped a three-day losing streak.

Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh declined to signal the central bank's intentions for its October meeting in a speech at the IMF and World Bank meetings in Bangkok. The odds of an October interest-rate increase dropped to roughly 15% from about 30%, according to the CME Fedwatch tool, while Treasury yields were largely stable.

Crypto futures volume slid 20% over 24 hours to $200 billion, while open interest rose 2% to $142.21 billion. Liquidations fell to $311 million from nearly $1 billion the prior day. The 24-hour long/short taker volume ratio was balanced, compared with shorts making up 52% a day earlier, and bitcoin's notional open interest rose just 0.3% against a 1% price gain, a pattern mirrored in ether and solana.