Crypto slides 6.7% from September's high as stablecoin supply stalls

Crypto prices have fallen over the past month, the supply of dollar stablecoins has stopped growing, and a federal rule that will govern stablecoin issuers has been finalized. This analysis puts the market data and the regulatory text side by side. It is built from daily closing prices on Coinbase Exchange, from fund-flow and stablecoin trackers, from the Bitcoin network's own statistics and from the final rule published in the Federal Register. It describes what these sources show and does not predict prices.

Prices: bitcoin down 6.7% from September's high

Bitcoin closed at $80,769.67 on Saturday, October 24, its lowest close since September 17, when it closed at $76,348.74. On September 21 it had closed at $86,594.94, its highest daily close since April, so Saturday's close was 6.7% lower (computed). Over a longer span, bitcoin's lowest close in the past 90 days was $62,764.20 on August 1 and its highest was the September 21 close, a range of 38.0% from low to high (computed). The standard deviation of its daily returns over the 30 days to October 22 translated to an annualized volatility of 26.0% (computed).

Ether has fallen further. It closed at $2,355.36 on October 24, 15.1% below its September 21 close of $2,775.58 (computed). Over the 30 days to October 22, ether lost 13.35% and bitcoin 5.7%, and the ratio of ether's price to bitcoin's fell to 0.02934 from 0.03194 (computed).

Several smaller coins fell more. Over the same 30 days, Dogecoin lost 21.6%, Avalanche 19.4% and XRP 16.9%, computed from the closes of September 22 and October 22. Bitcoin's own decline in that span was 5.7%.

A link to stocks

On October 22, bitcoin fell 3.2%, from $84,024.67 to $81,307.16, on the day the Nasdaq Composite fell 2.6% and the S&P 500 1.2%. A market report said that bitcoin fell below $82,000 early that Thursday "as crypto joined a broader selloff in riskier assets." That statement is a description of the timing, not proof of cause, and the daily-price data alone do not show it.

Funds: inflows, then outflows

Spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds in the United States took in $526.6 million on Monday, October 19, the largest daily net inflow in nearly a month, driven entirely by BlackRock's IBIT fund, which had $665.2 million of inflows, according to SoSoValue data reported by CoinDesk. Fidelity's FBTC lost $83.6 million and Grayscale's GBTC $54.9 million that day. Flows for October as a whole were about $90.5 million negative, and ether funds lost $103.3 million in a single day, a fourth straight session of outflows.

One fund is changing its sponsor structure. 21Shares US LLC told ARK Investment Management on October 16 that it is ending their support services agreement effective December 22, 2026. On December 15 the trust, which trades under the symbol ARKB on Cboe BZX, is to be renamed 21Shares Bitcoin ETF with the new symbol TBIT.

The network: harder to mine, with hashrate off its peak

Bitcoin's mining difficulty rose 5.92% on October 16 to 140.58 trillion, after a 0.03% decrease on October 3. Difficulty adjusts to the network's hashrate, which averaged 1.093e21 hashes a second on October 22, below the 3-month peak of 1.177e21 set on October 6. The data do not say whether the lower hashrate reflects miners switching machines off or the way daily averages are measured.

Stablecoins: supply stalls

DefiLlama's tracker shows $305.05 billion of dollar-pegged stablecoins in circulation, compared with $306.11 billion a week earlier and $306.01 billion a month earlier. Tether's USDT stands at $182.47 billion, and USD Coin at $72.17 billion, down 4.8% from $75.83 billion a month ago (computed). World Liberty Financial's USD1 is at $3.98 billion from $4.39 billion. The total has therefore been about flat for a month, with changes among issuers.

The OCC rule

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency finalized the regulation implementing the GENIUS Act, which was enacted on July 18, 2025, and the rule takes effect on January 18, 2027. The agency had proposed it on March 2, 2026 and received about 328 comments. Under the final rule, timely redemption may not exceed two business days, and an issuer must notify the OCC within 24 hours if it receives redemption requests above 10% of the outstanding issuance of any brand in a single 24-hour period.

The final rule requires at least 5% of reserve assets to be held as demand deposits or similar, against a proposal of at least 10%. The OCC also dropped a proposed "rebuttable presumption" that certain transactions with affiliates and related parties would be treated as violating the ban on interest or yield paid solely for holding a stablecoin. It kept the ban itself and said it keeps authority to address evasion of it.

What to take from the data

The sources show a market that has fallen in a month in which stock indexes also fell, with the heaviest declines in smaller coins, no growth in stablecoin supply and mixed fund flows. They do not show why holders of USD Coin or USD1 reduced their balances, and they do not show whether the rule's reserve and redemption limits will change supply when it takes effect in January.