Cryptocurrency market cap has fallen back above $4 trillion as markets recover from a record leverage flush over the weekend.
About $300 billion returned to the crypto markets Monday morning after over-indebted whales caused a massive meltdown this weekend.
Bitcoin and Ether have both returned to the middle of their range-bound channels, but some AI-related altcoins are on the rise.
AI-focused crypto token Bittensor (TAO) has pumped as much as 35%, crossing $410 at an 11-week high on Monday morning. However, the native token for the decentralized machine learning network remains down 46% from its all-time high.
Another AI token, ChainOpera AI (COAI), skyrocketed as much as 70% to an all-time high of $43.80 on Sunday. Decentralized GPU computing platform Render (RNDR) is up 17% on the day, hitting $2.80 in Monday morning trading in Asia.
Altcoins lead the recovery
DeFi platform Mantle (MNT) also rose sharply today, jumping 27% to reclaim $2.20, recouping all the losses from the weekend routine. The Trump family’s DeFi platform (WLFI) is also on the rise, gaining 18% on the day to reach $14.30 at the time of writing. Binance’s tokens, BNB and ASTER, both performed well, gaining 14% each.
The Binance exchange was involved in the big crash when the market maker froze and disconnected a number of tokens, leading to mass liquidations.
The company issued a statement on Sunday saying this happened before the sale offered compensation to traders who had USDE, BNSOL and WBETH as collateral.
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ETH had gained more than 8% to recover $4,200, XRP rose 9% to $2.57 and Solana rose 8% to $195. Meanwhile, Dogecoin, Chainlink and Sui all posted double-digit gains as altcoins led the market recovery today.
In the future, we will look back on this fuse and see it as a bump before new highs.
Green for next week #Altcoins.
New ATH test in 2-4 weeks. pic.twitter.com/BNwkuuVH7Y
— Michaël van de Poppe (@CryptoMichNL) October 12, 2025
A healthy spool wood
While the debt burden was brutal, the largest on record, it is healthy for markets, said Justin d’Anethan, head of partnerships at Arctic Digital, who estimated it was 10 to 15 times bigger than the COVID crash, or FTX, in terms of debt debt wiped out.
The last time altcoins were dumped this hard was during the COVID meltdown of March 2020, and a huge altseason followed in 2021.
“The fact that Bitcoin stayed above $115,000 after that kind of stress is a testament to the asset’s structural strength,” he added.
BTC recovered 5% from the dip below $110,000 and was trading at $115,300 at the time of writing.
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