A strong recovery brings market value back to the brink of $3 trillion.
The cryptocurrency sector has regained its positive momentum after a prolonged period of stagnation. Data from CoinGecko reveals a 39.6% increase in total market capitalization, equivalent to an increase of $840 billion, reaching nearly $3 trillion by the end of the third quarter. This surge successfully ended a three-quarter losing streak, marking the fastest quarterly growth rate since late 2024, although the price increase was accompanied by a decline in overall trading volumes.
August drives market recovery with institutional support
Market capitalization hit a quarterly peak near $3 trillion on September 21, before settling at $2.96 trillion, still 4% lower than its level at the start of the year. August accounted for the lion's share of this positive turnaround, with the market surging 21.8% and adding $490 billion alone. This boost was driven by several key factors:
The US Treasury Department announced plans to at least double its repurchase of long-term bonds.
Net and continuous cash flows into Bitcoin spot exchange-traded funds (ETFs).
The market held firm and was unaffected by the procedural vote on the CLARITY Act stalled in the US Senate in mid-September.
Ethereum outperforms its peers amid growing leverage
Ethereum surged 71% to $2,684, outperforming Bitcoin and most other major cryptocurrencies. This rise was fueled by record inflows of over $3.1 billion into US-based Ethereum spot funds, completely erasing the outflows seen in the first half of the year. Despite this surge, Ethereum's daily trading volume fell 23.2% to $11.5 billion, while the Glamsterdam network upgrade remains in beta testing on the Sepolia network following a delay to its main launch.
On the other hand, the overall average daily trading volume fell by 8.6% to $73.3 billion, while spot trading volumes on the top ten centralized exchanges declined by 14.2%. In contrast, derivatives contracts saw a surge in activity; open interest in futures contracts jumped by 40.6%, surpassing the $100 billion mark for the first time since the third quarter of 2025, reflecting a rapid return of leverage in the cryptocurrency market.
Changes in platform shares and the emergence of new networks
In terms of trading platforms, Binance expanded its spot market share to 42.7%, compared to 38.7% in the second quarter, and added $12.7 billion to open interest, while KuCoin and Deribit saw their share prices decline. Bitget, meanwhile, fell to eleventh place following a security breach in September that reduced its monthly activity.
In a related context, the Robinhood Chain network, which was launched on July 1, recorded trades exceeding $88.9 billion with an average of 9.5 million transactions per day, with meme currency speculators leading the largest part of this activity despite the network being primarily directed towards tokenizing stocks and real assets.
The cryptocurrency markets concluded the following period with some downward corrections, with the price of Bitcoin falling to around $80,200 in mid-October, under pressure from declining Asian stock indices and the emergence of US inflation data that slightly exceeded expectations.
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