Bitcoin gained 2.37% during the week ending October 2, 2026, recovering from an early dip, while Ethereum rose 2.14%. Total crypto market capitalization increased 1.74% to $2.92 trillion from $2.87 trillion the previous week. Liquidations remained limited after a small hit to long positions on Monday, while funding rates across major assets began rising after declining the prior week, potentially reflecting a more risk-on market. Michael Saylor’s Strategy acquired 1,665 BTC for approximately $142.7 million, repurchased $152 million of STRC and lifted its holdings to 847,666 BTC. Bitwise launched the first NEAR spot ETF, NRR, with a 0.75% annual management fee, and Robinhood said it would offer perpetuals (futures without expiry) through its app using Bitstamp, acquired by Robinhood in 2025. Crypto markets remained resilient amid rising yields and the AI trade, while the S&P 500 fell 0.56% and the Nasdaq declined 0.05%. Quant, Ore, Grass, Pump.fun and Collector Crypt were among the notable altcoin outperformers. The week also brought a series of protocol wind-downs and security developments: Balancer’s wind-down proposal passed, Drift Foundation opened compensation claims tied to its April 2026 exploit, and an Abracadabra wind-down vote failed for lack of quorum. MetaMask exited 17,000 validators and moved more than 523,000 ETH after a security incident involving block rewards, Near Intents suffered a $3.8 million exploit, and Magic Eden users were protected from more than $6 million in NFT losses during a whitehat exploit. Other updates included Chainlink’s CCIP 2.0 launch, OpenSea’s trading-card aggregator, Ethena’s expansion of its basis-trading strategy to Binance, and Jumper’s JUMP token sale surpassing its $2 million target by 16 times. In DeFi (decentralized finance), Coinbase tokenized stocks became available as collateral on Aave on Base, Derive proposed increasing DRV buybacks, Papertrade announced an October 10 launch, Arcus opened Season 1 of its points program, and Hyperliquid protocol Kinetiq’s KNTQ purchase mechanism drew criticism. Fundraising included $18.5 million for Limited, $110 million for Jeeves, an undisclosed token investment in Grass from Multicoin Capital and $49 million for World Network. The market roundup was dated 6:45 a.m. UTC on October 2, 2026, and cited CoinMarketCap’s chain-ranking page for its DeFi Brief data.