Weekly Perp News ReviewWeeklyWeek of October 5 - 11, 202612 items~16 min read
Perpetual Futures Weekly News Review - Week of October 5 - 11, 2026
A week that came from the long side. Bitcoin failed a third straight time at resistance, slid to $80,315, and closed -3.2% at $83,679. In between, $546.89m of leveraged positions were closed in a day - $479.73m of them longs - and the spot bid that had carried September stopped absorbing the selling. Every item below carries a named source and a stated date.
The week of October 5 - 11 was the unwind the prior issue's positioning data warned about. Bitcoin opened the week near $86,480, printed a Monday high of $86,996, then slid through Wednesday and Thursday to an $80,315 low before steadying into an $83,679 weekly close, -3.2% on the week. Total crypto market value sat at $2.80 trillion (-4.1%), bitcoin dominance at 59.5% (up from 59.3%), and the Fear & Greed index at 56 - Neutral.
The twelve items below are ordered by when they landed, not by importance. Each carries who reported it and where; the desk's comment is separated from the reported fact. The snapshot table fixes the week's data in one place before the items begin.
Market snapshot, week of October 5 - 11, 2026
Metric
Reading
Week on week
Bitcoin, weekly close
$83,679 (-3.2%)
range $80,315 - $86,996
Ethereum, weekly close
$2,504 (-8.3%)
from $2,732 the prior week
Hyperliquid HYPE
$86.72 (-4.2%)
all-time high of $97.98
Bitcoin perpetual funding
0.002%
per eight hours; Coinbase premium -0.118%
Wednesday 7 October flush
$546.89m
$546.89m of longs; one hour took $412.62m
US spot Bitcoin ETFs, weekly
-$681.1m
ended a three-week inflow streak
US spot Ether ETFs, weekly
-$542.07m
a ninth straight outflow session
Stablecoins, total market
$304.2bn
$0.9bn of supply redeemed on the week
Fed October hike odds
roughly 17%
75-85% odds of a hike by year-end
A week of two prints and one flush
The macro sequence ran in two beats, both dated. The September FOMC minutes landed on 7 October and showed that most officials judged a further increase appropriate before year-end, with the 2026 median dot rose to 4.1%. That left October hike odds near 17% against 75-85% odds of a move by year-end - a delay, not a stop. Then the long end did the rest: the 30-year briefly touched 5.70% on 7 October, its highest since 2002, and the 10-year closed the week at 5.24% with crude bid above the round number on Gulf shipping risk. several participants judged the effect of tariffs was diminishing while the influence of the AI buildout was strengthening.
Price and leverage did the rest. Bitcoin failed for the third week running at the same round-number ceiling, and Wednesday's break to $83,800 forced $546.89m of positions out over 24 hours. The composition is the story: $479.73m, or 88% of the total, were longs, and a single hour inside the move accounted for $412.62m, $400.24m of it longs (97.0%) against only $12.38m of shorts. about 101,772 accounts were closed out. open interest across the 21 exchanges CoinGlass tracks rose from $54.2bn to $55.3bn in the six hours after the flush.
The 7 October long flush, two windows
Window
Liquidations
Composition
Scale
Source
Rolling 24 hours to 7 October (long flush)
$546.9m
longs of a cascade of forced long closes after a third straight failure at $87,000
about 101,772 traders over 24 hours
CoinGlass via CoinDesk / Cointribune
Peak hour inside the session
$412.62m
$400.24m of longs (97.0%)
against shorts of $12.38m
CoinGlass via TokenPost
Spot demand turned, and the funding clock stayed flat
The most consequential number of the week was not a liquidation. US spot bitcoin ETFs shed $681.1m across five sessions - -$89.9m, +$118.86m, -$487.07m, -$244.13m, +$21.13m - the first negative week in a month and an end to the three-week streak that had built $3.08bn. three straight positive weeks had lifted the year-to-date ledger before this week's reversal. The year-to-date ledger still reads about $494m. Ether ETFs shed $542.07m (a ninth straight outflow session), NEAR funds took $35.99m, XRP funds $11.31m, and SOL funds gave back $24.81m.
US spot bitcoin ETFs, daily net flow, week of 5 - 9 October 2026
Session
Net flow
Note
5 October
-89.90m
the week opened negative
6 October
+118.86m
a brief rebound ahead of the Fed minutes
7 October
-487.07m
the week's worst session of the five
8 October
-244.13m
selling continued as oil and yields rose
9 October
+21.13m
a tentative inflow to end the week
Five-day total
-681.11m
a net outflow that ended a three-week inflow streak
The funding clock never confirmed the move in either direction. Binance's BTCUSDT funding sat near 0.002% per eight hours - close to neutral - while the Coinbase premium stayed negative all five sessions and widened to -0.118% by Sunday, while the dated curve held near 5% annualised, with the major December contracts at roughly 4.7-5.7%. Read together: the sell-off was neither a leveraged breakdown nor a spot capitulation, but a spot discount meeting a crowded long book.
Hyperliquid: record positions, thinner books
The structural story of the week sat on the largest perp venue. Hyperliquid's open positions reached a record 435,564 on 6 October, 115% above the 202,943 recorded in January, across 320,600 active wallets against 155,000 - 1.36 positions per wallet. Open interest stood at $17.29bn, $920m below its prior record; the venue's own two-sided mark put it at $12.77bn. And volume went the other way: $4.54bn a day, inside a $2-6bn band against $12bn-$16bn peaks in August, a 65% decline. Open interest now runs at close to four times the day's turnover.
The cohort arithmetic is unchanged and equally striking: Hyperliquid took 32.9% of the $616.2bn trailing-30-day perp DEX volume, printed $87.5m of 30-day fees, and has settled $5.4tn of cumulative perp volume. The behaviour change is what matters - traders are opening and holding rather than rotating, which is why the same book that looked patient in September looked thin on 7 October.
The regulatory week: CTX, CAM and two withdrawals
Four regulatory items landed inside the same seven days. The CFTC proposed Regulation CTX and Regulation CAM, an advance notice of proposed rulemaking for leveraged, margined or financed retail crypto transactions, with Michael Selig framing it as a break from enforcement-led rulemaking. FinCEN withdrew both of its self-custody proposals - FinCEN withdrew both its unhosted-wallet recordkeeping rule and its crypto-mixing designation proposal on 5 and 6 October. The Treasury and IRS updated the staking safe harbour for crypto product trusts, and ESMA told EU firms to stop servicing stablecoins that do not comply with MiCA. The direction of travel is consistent: more structure around leverage, less surveillance around self-custody.
Cross-reads: one thread
The items above are separate, but they share a single thread: the marginal buyer changed hands. Through September the ETF ledger absorbed every mid-week outflow; this week it joined the selling at $681.1m, and the Coinbase premium stayed negative for five straight sessions. On the venue side, record positions sat on a book handling $4.54bn a day. The two facts describe the same configuration from opposite ends - less spot demand, more parked leverage - and the 7 October flush priced it.
What did not change is as important as what did. Funding stayed flat at 0.002% and the dated curve held near 5% annualised, with the major December contracts at roughly 4.7-5.7%, so the carry trade was never repriced by the flush; open interest rebuilt within six hours. A week that closes -3.2% but recovers $82,545 to $83,679 is a repricing of positioning, not a change of regime.
The week, item by item
1. The CFTC proposed Regulation CTX and Regulation CAM, giving leveraged crypto venues a federal registration path Regulation
Chair Michael Selig unveiled Regulation CTX and Regulation CAM at the Fordham Law Blockchain Regulatory Symposium: an advance notice of proposed rulemaking for leveraged, margined or financed retail crypto transactions. Regulation CAM would create a tailored crypto subcategory of designated contract market registration for venues listing only these transactions, and a fully paid position recorded only on a platform's internal books would still be covered unless it satisfies the statute's actual-delivery test. Public comment runs 60 days from Federal Register publication.
The lever is the leverage hook. A rule that reaches fully paid trades whenever a platform holds the asset on its own books moves a large part of spot crypto into a futures-adjacent framework, and the actual-delivery test the CFTC floats would push custody outward rather than inward.
2. FinCEN withdrew two self-custody surveillance proposals in the same week Regulation
FinCEN withdrew both its unhosted-wallet recordkeeping rule and its crypto-mixing designation proposal on 5 and 6 October. One would have required recordkeeping above $3,000 and reporting above $10,000 for transactions involving unhosted wallets; the other would have designated international crypto mixing as a class of transactions of primary money laundering concern under Section 311 of the USA PATRIOT Act.
The two withdrawals matter more for plumbing than for price. Unhosted-wallet reporting was the clearest route to treating self-custody as a reporting event; without it, the compliance surface around a trading desk narrows instead of widening.
3. The September minutes put most Fed officials behind another hike before year-end Volatility
most officials judged a further increase appropriate before year-end; the 2026 median dot rose to 4.1%. October hike odds sat near 17% while the market priced 75-85% odds of a move by year-end. several participants judged the effect of tariffs was diminishing while the influence of the AI buildout was strengthening. Fed speakers were not aligned: Christopher Waller said I am not greatly concerned that tighter monetary policy threatens a damaging slowdown, while John Williams the next move could wait until December rather than come in October.
This is the week's macro pivot in slow motion. The market had been pricing a delay, not a stop, and the minutes confirm the destination is unchanged. High rates meeting a thin-leverage crypto book is the set-up the rest of the week played out.
4. Crypto liquidations reached $546.89m in 24 hours, with longs absorbing $479.73m Liquidations
bitcoin slid under $84,000 in one burst. The 24-hour total was $546.89m, of which $479.73m - 88% - were long positions. A single hour took $412.62m, $400.24m of it longs (97.0%) against just $12.38m of shorts. about 101,772 traders were closed out. open interest across the 21 exchanges CoinGlass tracks rose from $54.2bn to $55.3bn in the six hours after the flush.
A move of under two percent should not force out a hundred thousand accounts. That it did says more about where the stops sat than about the size of the move, and the immediate rebuilding of open interest says the book read the low as an entry rather than an exit.
5. Hyperliquid's open positions hit a record 435,564 while daily volume sat at $4.54bn Hyperliquid
Positions reached 435,564, 115% above the 202,943 recorded in January, across 320,600 active wallets against 155,000 - 1.36 positions each. Open interest stood at $17.29bn, $920m below the prior record. Volume went the other way: $4.54bn a day, inside a $2-6bn band against $12bn-$16bn peaks in August - a 65% decline.
Positions up, volume down leaves open interest at close to four times the day's turnover. That is a book only the first through the door can exit quickly, and the flush the next day was the first test of exactly that.
6. US spot bitcoin ETFs shed $681.1m, ending a three-week inflow streak ETF Flows
The five sessions ran -$89.9m, +$118.86m, -$487.07m, -$244.13m and +$21.13m. Wednesday's -$487.07m was the week's largest single-day outflow. The week reverses the three straight positive weeks that had built $3.08bn, and three straight positive weeks had lifted the year-to-date ledger before this week's reversal. The year-to-date ledger now reads about $494m. Ether ETFs shed $542.07m (a ninth straight outflow session), while NEAR funds took $35.99m, XRP funds $11.31m and SOL funds gave back $24.81m.
The end of the streak is the more important half of the number. A spot bid that had absorbed every mid-week outflow for three weeks instead joined the selling. That is a change in the marginal buyer, not a rounding error.
7. Brent rose +2.4% on tanker attacks as the 30-year yield touched its highest since 2002 Volatility
both benchmarks rose as tanker attacks in the Strait of Hormuz lifted supply risk. Brent settled the week at $104.72 (+2.4%) and WTI at $91.85 (+0.8%). the 30-year briefly touched 5.70% on 7 October, its highest since 2002. The 10-year closed the week at 5.24% and the 2-year at 4.80%.
Oil is the transmission line from geopolitics to the thing crypto actually trades against: the rate complex. With the long end at a multi-decade high and crude bid, the discount rate on a non-yielding asset rises twice over.
8. Bitcoin closed the week -3.2% at $83,679 after an $80,315 low Volatility
The week ran from a Monday high of $86,996 to a Thursday low of $80,315 - the low came after the high, so the larger move inside the week was downward. failed at $87,000 for a third straight week, then slid under $84,000 on Wednesday. Friday closed at $82,545 before the market steadied into $83,679. Bitcoin finished 33.6% below the $126,080 all-time high.
The shape matters more than the level: a third straight lower high into the round number, then a lower low. Bitcoin outran the alt market while falling - dominance rose to 59.5% (up from 59.3%) - which is what a defensive rotation inside crypto looks like.
9. ESMA told EU firms to stop servicing stablecoins that do not comply with MiCA Regulation
ESMA told EU firms on 8 October to stop servicing stablecoins that do not comply with MiCA. The opinion sets controls so that EU clients cannot acquire or increase positions in non-compliant tokens, with only limited, time-bound residual services permitted for an orderly wind-down.
Stablecoins are the collateral that prices every perpetual. A regime that pushes non-compliant supply out of an entire jurisdiction changes where the collateral sits, which is a market-structure question before it is a price question.
10. The Treasury and IRS updated the staking safe harbour for crypto exchange-traded product trusts Market Structure
the Treasury and IRS updated the staking safe harbour for crypto exchange-traded product trusts on 6 October. The update covers which proof-of-stake protocols qualify, the use of multiple custodians, slashing protection, unstaking ahead of distributions and the consistent treatment of staking rewards.
A trust that can stake without endangering its tax status is a trust that can pass yield to holders. For the staking-tied products that sit next to the perp complex, that is a structural upgrade in what the wrapper can do.
The purchase took Strategy's disclosed treasury to 848,000 BTC. Structured holders of this kind finance themselves in the same rate complex the Fed minutes described, and they buy on a weekly clock regardless of the tape.
The weekly buyers do not read the tape; their cost of carry does. With the 10-year at 5.24% the arithmetic of adding is worse than it was a month ago, which is why the pace - not the conviction - is the variable to watch.
12. Total stablecoin supply contracted $0.9bn on the week, led by USDC redemptions Stablecoins
Supply fell to $304.2bn, supply contracted about $0.9bn on the week, led by USDC. The collateral that funds both ETF settlement and perp margin shrank in the same week the total crypto market cap fell -4.1% to $2.80 trillion.
A contracting collateral base with a falling perp volume-to-open-interest ratio is the same trade expressed twice: less capital, less churn. It is the mirror image of the September build, and it is the slow variable that decides whether a carry can be held through the next print.
The week ahead
The 14 October September CPI, seen at 0.6% on the month and between 3.6-3.7% on the year, with core at 0.2%. It is the print that reprices the 27-28 October decision from roughly 17%.
Whether the ETF ledger can turn back positive after $681.1m of net redemptions - or whether the -$487.07m session marked a change in the marginal spot buyer.
Hyperliquid's volume band: whether $4.54bn marks a floor or the $2-6bn range keeps grinding lower while positions stay at record levels.
The Coinbase premium, still negative at -0.118%. It is the cleanest daily read on whether U.S. spot demand is returning.
The rate complex: with the long end at the highest since 2002 (the 30-year briefly touched 5.70% on 7 October, its highest since 2002), another hot print tightens the discount rate on an asset that pays nothing.
Sources
The CFTC proposed Regulation CTX and Regulation CAM, giving leveraged crypto venues a federal registration path — Commodity Futures Trading Commission, 5 October 2026. Source
FinCEN withdrew two self-custody surveillance proposals in the same week — Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, 6 October 2026. Source
The September minutes put most Fed officials behind another hike before year-end — Federal Reserve, 7 October 2026. Source
Crypto liquidations reached $546.89m in 24 hours, with longs absorbing $479.73m — CoinGlass, 7 October 2026. Source
Hyperliquid's open positions hit a record 435,564 while daily volume sat at $4.54bn — HyperTracker, 6 October 2026. Source
US spot bitcoin ETFs shed $681.1m, ending a three-week inflow streak — SoSoValue, 9 October 2026. Source
Brent rose +2.4% on tanker attacks as the 30-year yield touched its highest since 2002 — Reuters, 7 October 2026. Source
Bitcoin closed the week -3.2% at $83,679 after an $80,315 low — Coinbase Exchange, 11 October 2026. Source
ESMA told EU firms to stop servicing stablecoins that do not comply with MiCA — European Securities and Markets Authority, 8 October 2026. Source
The Treasury and IRS updated the staking safe harbour for crypto exchange-traded product trusts — US Treasury and Internal Revenue Service, 6 October 2026. Source
Strategy added 334 BTC to reach 848,000 BTC — Strategy, 5 October 2026. Source
Total stablecoin supply contracted $0.9bn on the week, led by USDC redemptions — Stablecoin Beat, 11 October 2026. Source
Bitcoin daily OHLC, weekly close and range — Coinbase Exchange BTC-USD daily candles via Bitcoin Mastery, 5 - 11 October 2026.
Wednesday long-flush liquidations and trader counts — CoinGlass via CoinDesk, Cointribune, Crypto Times and TokenPost, 7 October 2026.
US spot bitcoin, ether, NEAR, XRP and SOL ETF weekly flows — SoSoValue daily ledger via Hodl.Press, TokenPost and PrimeXBT, 5 - 9 October 2026.
Year-to-date ETF ledger — SoSoValue / Farside ledger compilation via Hodl.Press, TokenPost and PrimeXBT, 9 October 2026.
Bitcoin perpetual funding, Coinbase premium and dated-curve basis — Binance via FinanceFeeds; TokenPost; the Zerocap weekly wrap, 5 - 11 October 2026.
Hyperliquid open positions, wallets, tracker open interest and volume — HyperTracker via Cryptopolitan, CoinAlertNews and BigGo Finance; Hyperliquid public API via OpenChainBench, 6 - 7 October 2026.
Perp DEX cohort volume and open interest — DefiLlama perps dashboard via Crypto Coin Show, 6 October 2026.
Fed pricing, minutes and speaker remarks — CME FedWatch via TokenPost; LSEG via Reuters; FOMC September minutes via CNBC and CryptoTicker, 5 - 11 October 2026.
Treasury yields, equity closes, gold, crude and VIX — Schwab Market Edge; StreetStats weekly; IGM Financial, 9 October 2026.
Crypto market cap, dominance and Fear & Greed — CoinMarketCap aggregates via CoinPulseHQ and CryptoTicker; TokenPost; alternative.me, 11 October 2026.
What was the biggest perpetual-futures story of the week of October 5 - 11, 2026?
The 7 October flush and the change underneath it. Bitcoin failed a third time at the round number and slid to $80,315; $546.89m of positions were closed in 24 hours, $479.73m of them longs (88%). The same week, US spot bitcoin ETFs shed $681.1m, ending a three-week inflow streak. The liquidated side and the missing buyer were the same side.
Did the Fed minutes settle the October rate question?
They pointed the same way the market already leaned. The minutes showed that most officials judged a further increase appropriate before year-end, and the 2026 median dot rose to 4.1%. October odds sat near 17% against 75-85% odds of a move by year-end, so the question is December, not whether.
Why did a small price move liquidate so much?
Because the stops sat close. Bitcoin's Wednesday drop was under two percent, yet the 24-hour window took $546.89m - $400.24m of it in a single hour, 97.0% of that hour long. about 101,772 accounts were closed. The size of the flush measured the positioning, not the move.
Are bitcoin ETF flows still growing?
No - they reversed. The five sessions ran -$89.9m, +$118.86m, -$487.07m, -$244.13m, +$21.13m, a net $681.1m and an end to the three-week streak that had built $3.08bn. The year-to-date ledger still reads about $494m, but it has given back most of the gain.
Where can I read last week's news review?
The prior week's review remains published in the Weekly Perp News Review archive. Prior issues are frozen as published and never updated against later data.