🗓️ October 21 | Crypto Daily The market is rebounding, but it’s too early to call a reversal: major coins are broadly higher, while investor sentiment remains cautious. 📊 Market Snapshot (around 09:00 Beijing time, CoinGecko) BTC: $83,006, 24H +1.67% ETH: $2,451.53, 24H +2.20% SOL: $106.59, 24H +1.85% Total crypto market cap is about $2.80 trillion, down 1.20% over 24H; 24H trading volume is about $82.9 billion, up around 19% from the previous day; BTC dominance is about 59.5%, and the Fear & Greed Index is 44 (Fear). The key things to watch today: 1) ETF flows are sharply divided. The latest full public trading day was October 19: U.S. spot BTC ETFs saw net inflows of about $526.7 million, driven mainly by a $665.2 million single-day inflow into IBIT; ETH ETFs saw net outflows of about $103.3 million over the same period, while SOL ETFs had net outflows of about $6.7 million. Money is flowing back into BTC, but the move hasn’t spread across the broader market. 2) JPMorgan is expanding JPM Coin to Ethereum, continuing to move institutional settlements onto public blockchains. This is a positive for ETH’s long-term narrative, but in the short term, price action still depends on whether capital actually flows back in. 3) Switzerland’s FINMA has approved the country’s first spot Bitcoin ETF aimed at retail investors. Switzerland already has a number of crypto ETPs, so the more significant development is the further easing of the regulatory framework for a “single-asset BTC ETF.” 4) The amount of ETH staked has hit a record, but yields continue to decline. The upside is that circulating supply is locked up; the downside is that marginal returns are falling, so the staking narrative alone is unlikely to lift ETH directly. Three upcoming dates to watch: • October 22: U.S. initial jobless claims • October 23: Preliminary U.S. S&P Global Manufacturing and Services PMIs; final University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment • October 27–28: Federal Reserve FOMC meeting; the interest rate path remains central to pricing risk assets in this cycle My take: This looks more like a recovery after being oversold. It’s good to see incremental capital returning to BTC, but total market cap is still shrinking, and ETH and SOL ETFs are still seeing outflows, suggesting risk appetite hasn’t fully recovered. If BTC can hold $83,000 and volume continues to rise, the rebound could have staying power; otherwise, expect more range-bound trading. Don’t let one green candle lure you into chasing the rally. Trading strategy: Keep positions light and trade with the trend; wait for a confirmed pullback before adding. Avoid high leverage and weaker small-cap coins for now. Risk warning: Crypto assets are extremely volatile. The above is for market observation only and does not constitute investment advice.

WuBlockchain learned that Solana ecosystem leveraged token and stablecoin protocol Hylo has announced the completion of a $1 million strategic funding round led by Solana Ventures, with participation from Colosseum, Helius co-founder and CEO Mert Mumtaz, Jupiter Chief Operating Officer Kash Dhanda, and several other angel investors; this marks Solana Ventures’ second investment in Hylo and Colosseum’s third follow-on investment. The Hylo team said it will next expand its leveraged tokens into new asset categories including 3x yield-bearing assets, stocks, and commodities, while continuing to build yield and leverage infrastructure around the decentralized stablecoin hyUSD.

Tonight, $SOL will undergo its biggest consensus-layer change since launch. According to Solana’s official upgrade page, Alpenglow is expected to activate in the 1,064th epoch, at around 21:20 tonight (UTC+8). The exact timing may vary slightly with block production speed. Alpenglow will replace TowerBFT, which has been in use since 2020. According to the official explanation, transactions currently take about 12.8 seconds to become irreversible, while the new mechanism targets about 150 milliseconds. CoinDesk also cautioned that this is only a target, and actual performance will still depend on network conditions. The transition will not happen all at once. The old voting mechanism will remain in use for the first 5,000 slots (about 18 minutes) after the epoch begins, and Alpenglow will officially take over at slot 459,653,000. Validators must upgrade to the Agave 4.3.2 series client. Firedancer and Frankendancer will not be supported during the migration and will need to be temporarily switched out. The voting cost, previously about 1 SOL per epoch, will be eliminated and replaced with a fixed 0.8 SOL access fee. Another detail worth noting is that vote transactions will be moved out of blocks. On-chain transaction counts may drop significantly after the upgrade, but that does not mean user activity has declined, so keep this distinction in mind when looking at the data. I believe shorter finality is a tangible improvement for payments, cross-chain bridges, and trading, but stability is the top priority on the first day of a major consensus upgrade. Tonight, I’ll first watch to see whether block production and confirmations proceed smoothly, rather than rushing to interpret price movements. The above is solely my personal opinion and does not constitute investment advice.