Alpha Navigator: Quest for Alpha [October 2025]
Equities and Fixed Income increased in October, Real Assets were mixed, while Crypto decreased.
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Executive Summary
- Equities and Fixed Income increased in October, Real Assets were mixed, while Crypto decreased.
- US, Canada, and New Zealand reduced interest rates in October, while the UK, Eurozone, Australia, China, and Japan left interest rates unchanged.
- US Fed chair Powell mentioned the Committee had differing views on a December rate cut, and that a further reduction is not a ‘foregone conclusion’. The Fed will also end its balance sheet reduction efforts on 1 December.
- Crypto prices were impacted by trade tensions during the month. In mid-October, US President Trump said the US will impose a 100% tariff on China in response to China’s attempt to impose export controls on rare earths, triggering mass crypto liquidations. In late October, US and China reached a trade truce, under which China agreed to pause export controls on rare earths for one year.
- Key macro events in November include interest rate decisions in China and New Zealand, and the release of US FOMC minutes.
- BTC's 1-month performance correlation was positive with all Equity indices, but mixed with Real Assets and Fixed Income.
- ETHʼs 1-month performance correlation was positive with Equities and Real Assets, but mixed with Fixed Income.
- BTCʼs rolling 30-day return correlation increased with S&P 500, turned positive with REIT, and negative with Gold.
- BTC options implied volatility (IV) increased for all durations.
- ETH options IV increased for all durations.
- Aggregated open interest (OI) of BTC futures across exchanges saw a 11% overall increase in October. CME OI decreased by 3%, while others decreased by 13%.
- US spot BTC ETFs saw net inflows of US$3.4 billion in October, slightly lower than Septemberʼs $3.5 billion.
- US spot ETH ETFs recorded net inflows of $570 million in October, up from $286 million in September, marking the seventh consecutive month of net inflows.
- ARB/OP showed the strongest price performance correlation at 0.91, followed by DOT/ATOM at 0.90.
- All DeFi pairs showed moderate positive correlations, led by UNI/LDO at 0.81.
- The price ratio (BTC price divided by ETH price) maintained the -1 standard deviation (SD) level in October.
- Our style-factor screens track momentum, value, growth, and risk for the Layer-1 and Layer-2, DeFi, Gaming, and NFT categories. Below is the screen for selected top crypto tokens by market cap in the Layer-1 and Layer-2 category. L1 and L2 token prices mostly dropped in October. ZK (-41.8%) led the fall, followed by OP (-40.4%).
- Our events section shows recent and upcoming events for selected tokens, as well as important macroeconomic events.
Token | 1M Price (%) | Events |
Bitcoin (BTC) | +5.68% | US spot BTC ETFs saw net inflows of$3.4 billion in October, slightly lower than September’s $3.5 billion. |
Ether (ETH) | -3.61% | US spot ETH ETFs recorded net inflows of $570 million in October. Ethereum’s Fusaka upgrade was activated on the Sepolia testnet,with the upgrade set for 3 December. Ethereum Foundation announced that EIP-7825 will update the per-transaction gas limit cap to 16.78 million in the upgrade. Ethereum developers unveiled the Kohaku project, a SDK for building secure wallet functions with an emphasis on privacy. |
Cronos (CRO) | -32.81% | Cronos EVM mainnet Smartrun upgrade was completed. Cronos now supports EIP-7702, which allows Externally Owned Accounts (EOAs) to temporarily act like smart contracts. This upgrade also introduces protocol improvements, including new opcodes, Ethereum client updates, and IBC interoperability. |
XRP (XRP) | -11.62% | Ripple is reportedly fundraising $1 billion to purchase XRP to hold in a digital asset treasury (DAT). The DAT will consist of the purchased tokens and some of Ripple’s own stockpile. Ripple completed its acquisition of global prime broker Hidden Road, now rebranded as Ripple Prime, aiming to enhance the utility and reach of its RLUSD stablecoin. |
USDC (USDC) | N/A | Circle launched the testnet for its L1 Arc, with participation from over 100 companies including BlackRock, Visa, and Amazon Web Services. The initiative focuses on various financial applications in payments, stablecoin infrastructure, and capital markets. |
Chainlink (LINK) | +28.05% | S&P Global partnered with Chainlink to provide on-chain access to stablecoin stability assessments (SSAs), enabling S&P Global Ratings to provide risk assessments to stablecoins from 1 (very strong) to 5 (weak) based on stability of peg to fiat currencies. |
Artificial Superintelligence Alliance (FET) | -13.29% | Ocean Protocol withdrew from the Artificial Superintelligence Alliance, formed in 2024 with Fetch.ai and SingularityNET. $OCEAN can now be de-pegged from FET and re-listed on exchanges. |
Read the full Alpha Navigator report: Alpha Navigator [October 2025]
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