Altcoins rally on thin trading as bitcoin holds below $83,500

Small tokens are outpacing the major cryptocurrencies on Monday, with the CoinDesk 80 up around 3% over the past 24 hours, more than double the 1.2% gain in the CoinDesk 5.

Bitcoin BTC$84,155.39 is trading below $83,500, after hitting a high above $84,000 on Sunday, while ether ETH$2,554.00 has added around 2.5% to trade at $2,560.

The gains are coming from the thinnest part of the market. A year on from the Oct. 10, 2025 flash crash, order-book depth for bitcoin and ether has recovered to pre-crash levels in dollar terms, while altcoin liquidity has continued to erode, according to CoinDesk research.

“Market makers have returned to majors,” Joshua de Vos, research lead at CoinDesk said in Saturday’s report.

Institutional money is heading the other way, with U.S.-listed spot bitcoin ETFs recording $681 million of net outflows last week, the most since June, according to SoSoValue. Most of the selling came on Wednesday and Thursday. Spot ether ETFs have not had a day of inflows since Sept. 28. The nine-day run of outflows is the longest since June.