The cryptocurrency-meme currencies led the October gains, most notably Dogecoin (DOGE). According to CoinGecko, the leading cryptocurrency registered 101% gains in the month. With this, it recorded the highest monthly appreciation among the Top 100 cryptocurrencies.
Bitcoin (BTC), on the other hand, confirmed the positive trend of the October months and rose 5.56% for the month. And Ether (ETH) rose 18.39% in October and broke a two-month sequence of devaluations.
Digital asset analysts attributed the big jump in Dogecoin to Elon Musk’s $44 billion acquisition of Twitter. Cryptocurrency fans believe that the billionaire may integrate DOGE with Twitter, allowing the cryptocurrency to be used on the platform.
During an appearance on NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” in May 2021, Musk suggested that Twitter could charge users to write messages. At the time, the billionaire said he could accept DOGE as payment, charging 0.1 DOGE per tweet. It is not known whether Musk was joking or not, but the line left the market optimistic.
Biggest gains
After Dogecoin, the MASK token was the second best performer in October, with gains of 96%. Next came the SUSHI token from the decentralized exchange (DEX) SushiSwap, which appreciated 45%.
ETH’s positive monthly return was driven in part by a small squeeze last week. The cryptocurrency benefited from new speculation following The Merge, which took place in September and brought news to the network. In addition, ETH is producing new tokens at a slower pace – implying less supply, which boosts prices.
Katie Talati, research leader at Arca Funds, attributed ETH’s outperformance over BTC to “market structure,” given that more traders were betting against ETH than BTC – not an indication of “anything fundamentally changing.”
“Bitcoin doesn’t have a strong narrative at the moment, while ETH still has the Merge narrative,” he said.
Biggest losses
On the other hand, the market also recorded heavy losses in October. In that regard, the biggest was from Rally (RLY), an ERC-20 token, whose price fell 33 percent over the past month.
The native CEL token from the cryptocurrency lending platform Celsius Network, lost 27%. In addition to Celsius’ bankruptcy, former CEO Alex Mashinsky withdrew $10 million in the weeks before the company froze customer accounts. The market did not view the move favorably, which negatively impacted the token’s price.
Finally, Terra Luna Classic’s LUNC token fell 31% during the month, dashing hopes among traders hoping for a recovery after the network’s collapse in May.