CMC Market Pulse delivers actionable market insights, giving you all the key narratives and developments you need in under 5 minutes.
Market Overview 📉
*Data as of 6:45 AM UTC on October 2, 2026.
Bitcoin (BTC) dipped early in the week but recovered strongly, rising 2.37% this week, while Ethereum (ETH) trailed behind again, climbing 2.14% in the same period. Total crypto market cap grew to 2.92T, up 1.74% from $2.87T the week prior.
Liquidations this week showed little action, with both long and short positions holding well. Longs took a small hit on Monday, but the liquidations tapered off quickly after. Funding rates across majors have begun to climb back up again after drifting down last week, perhaps indicating a more risk-on market.
📌 Michael Saylor’s Strategy has acquired 1,665 BTC for approximately $142.7M, and repurchased $152M of STRC, bringing their total holdings to 847,666 BTC. - Link
📌 BitWise launches the first NEAR spot ETF, ticker NRR, with the annual management fee set at 0.75%. - Link
📌 Robinhood to offer perpetuals trading on their app, powered by Bitstamp, which was acquired by Robinhood in 2025. - Link
Why does it matter?
The markets continue to hold strong, fuelled by the AI trade, despite the seemingly uncontrolled rising yield situation. Crypto held key levels strong, while indices continue to trade just slightly off their highs. The S&P 500 is down 0.56% this week, while the Nasdaq fared better, down only 0.05% in the same period.
Notable altcoin outperformers this week included Quant (QNT), Ore (ORE), Grass (GRASS), Pump.fun (PUMP), and Collector Crypt (CARDS).
Narrative of the Week 📰
Despite the bullish sentiment across crypto market participants, protocol wind downs continue to ravage the crypto landscape as protocols fail to recover from the bear market.
📌 The governance proposal to wind down the Balancer protocol has passed. Pools will stay live until October 30th. Treasury distribution opens after May 2027 for BAL token holders. - Link
📌 Drift Foundation opens claims for victims of the April 2026 exploit. Users can now claim 1 DFX token for every 1 USDT lost during the exploit. The claim window closes 1 January 2028, with unclaimed tokens to be burnt. - Link
📌 A governance proposal has been made to wind down, MIM stablecoin issuer, Abracadabra, citing its lack of backing following several prior hacks. The vote has failed due to lack of quorum. - Link
Why does it matter?
As the new cycle begins, older projects from past cycles that have failed to maintain a sustainable business model have no choice but to wind down, consolidating market share in sector leaders.
Major Project Updates 🗓️
📌 Metamask exits 17,000 validators, moving over 523,000 ETH, following a security incident regarding block rewards. No customer funds are at risk. - Link
📌 Near Intents, by Near Protocol, has been exploited for $3.8M. The vulnerability has since been patched and the victims will be compensated in full. - Link
📌 USDe issuer, Ethena, expands their basis trade strategy to Binance, using bStocks as collateral and hedging with USDT-based perpetuals on Binance. - Link
📌 Chainlink unveils CCIP 2.0, with institutional risk controls, flexible settlement, and compliance functionality. - Link
📌 NFT marketplace, Magic Eden, undergoes a whitehat exploit as 0xQuit and a handful of whitehat hackers swoop in to save over $6M in NFTs from being drained. - Link
📌 NFT marketplace, Opensea launches their TCG aggregator, allowing users to purchase Pokemon, One Piece, sports, and more trading cards through their platform. - Link
📌 Multi-chain superapp, Jumper, launches their JUMP token sale on Legion, with the sale already surpassing the $2M target by 16x, hours before it closes. - Link
Why does it matter?
With the reignited interest in crypto, hacks and security incidents return to the spotlight again with the targets growing larger and larger.
DeFi Brief 🏦
*Data as of 6:45 AM UTC on October 2, 2026.
📌 Coinbase’s tokenized stocks are now available on Aave on Base. Users can now deposit tokenized stocks and borrow USDC against them. - Link
📌 Options protocol, Derive proposes increasing the DRV buyback allocation from 35% to 50% of their protocol fees, leading up to their V3 launch. - Link
📌 Loss-driven 1000x leverage perp trading protocol, Papertrade, announces its launch date for 10 October. - Link
📌 Arcus, the perp DEX built be the dYdX team on Robinhood Chain, officially launches their points program. Season 0 has already settled and the points program is now in Season 1. - Link
📌 Hyperliquid protocol, Kinetiq, announced the final distribution of kPoints. However, instead of a regular airdrop, kPoints enables users to purchase KNTQ at $0.26 per token, drawing backlash from loyal users. - Link
Why does it matter?
The push to increase the utility of tokenized stocks moves forward as leading money market protocol Aave accepts them as deposit collateral.
Fundraises 💰
📌 Self-custodial banking platform, Limited, raises $18.5M in a seed round led by Third Prime, North Island Ventures, The House Fund and Collab+Currency, with support from ParaFi, DCG, and more. - Link
📌 Stablecoin-native banking platform, Jeeves, raises $110M in a Series C funding round led by CoinFund, with support from a16z crypto, Coinbase Ventures, ParaFi, Y Combinator, and more. - Link
📌 Solana DePIN project, Grass, receives an undisclosed investment in tokens from Multicoin Capital. - Link
📌 Blockchain-based identity protocol, World Network, has raised $49M in a private funding round from undisclosed investors. - Link
Tweet of the Week 📝
Source: @jupiter_trade
This is who you’re trading against.
