Crypto week in review: Bitcoin holds, altcoins slide

The week from October 5 to 11 left its mark on every crypto portfolio, but to very different depths. Bitcoin trades at $82,922, or €74,020, on Sunday morning, 2.1 percent below the level of last Sunday. Ether lost 6.8 percent, XRP 5.8 percent and Solana as much as 8.1 percent. Holders who mostly own Bitcoin got off lightly. Those spread widely across altcoins lost considerably more. Here is the week in review, with the reasons behind it and what to go through in your own portfolio today.

How your crypto portfolio performed this week

The week started strong. On Monday morning Bitcoin stood at $86,636, the high of the week. By Thursday evening the price had slipped to just above $80,000, and among the altcoins the sell-off was fiercer still. The market has steadied somewhat since then, without making up the losses. The figures rest on hourly prices from CoinGecko, calculated from Sunday, October 4, at 2 a.m. to Sunday, October 11, at 2 a.m. German time.

A simple calculation shows what this means for a typical portfolio. A basket holding equal parts of these four coins lost 5.7 percent over the week: $1,000 became $943. A basket with 60 percent Bitcoin, 20 percent Ether and 10 percent each in XRP and Solana lost only 4.0 percent. The Bitcoin weighting, in other words, cushioned the fall. Both figures are calculated in dollars, because that is the currency the prices are set in.