Crypto

Bitcoin Slips Below $82,000 as Solana's Alpenglow Upgrade Goes Live

Bitcoin fell below $82,000 on Oct. 22, 2026, reversing a run toward $85,000, while Solana activated its Alpenglow upgrade, cutting finality to about 150 milliseconds.

Oct 22, 2026 - 07:20

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Bitcoin fell below $82,000 on Thursday, October 22, 2026, giving back a late-Wednesday rally that took it close to $85,000, as mixed quarterly results from Tesla and Meta Platforms revived doubts over artificial intelligence spending and pulled down equities across Asia, CoinDesk reported. The decline came a day after Solana switched to a new consensus protocol, Alpenglow, which its developers say cuts transaction finality from about 12.8 seconds to roughly 150 milliseconds.

A round trip near $85,000

Bitcoin traded around $81,800 on Thursday morning in Europe, down 2.7% since midnight UTC, after losing as much as 2.9%, its steepest slide in two weeks, according to CoinDesk. The cryptocurrency had risen to nearly $84,800 late on Wednesday before reversing. Earlier, during Asian trading, bitcoin fell as much as 2.4% and stood around $82,700 at 1 p.m. in Singapore, Bloomberg reported.

The move hit leveraged traders on both sides. About $431 million in positions were liquidated over 24 hours, according to CoinGlass data cited in CoinDesk's live coverage. Roughly $173 million of that came from short sellers during the climb, while bullish bets accounted for $210 million of the $222 million liquidated over the most recent 12 hours. The largest single liquidation was an $11.8 million bitcoin long position on Binance, closed near $83,500.

Bloomberg noted that bitcoin remains about a third below its all-time high above $126,000, reached a year ago.

Altcoins and DeFi tokens fall further

Smaller tokens declined more than bitcoin. The CoinDesk 80 index was down 3.2%, compared with 2.5% for the CoinDesk 5, and ether lost 2.6% to near $2,400, CoinDesk reported. The CoinDesk DeFi index slid 5.6%, with Curve's CRV token down 8.2% to 37 cents, Ethena's ENA down 7.2% and Uniswap's UNI down 5%.

Monero was an exception. CoinDesk's market report put XMR up 4.9% at around $651 since midnight UTC, while its live coverage showed an 11% gain to about $650 over a broader window. Futures open interest in the privacy coin topped $300 million this week, near January's record, according to SoSoValue data cited by CoinDesk.

In derivatives markets, trading volume rose 19% to $226.6 billion while open interest fell 2.46% to $141.8 billion, which CoinDesk said indicated that traders were mostly closing positions rather than opening new ones.

ETF inflows continue

The price drop came despite steady demand for U.S.-listed spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds. The funds took in $1.1 billion in net inflows so far this week, Bloomberg reported, after $909.6 million of outflows over the previous two weeks. CoinDesk, citing SoSoValue, said inflows exceeded $1 billion over the first three days of the week.

Macroeconomic factors also weighed on risk assets. Brent crude rose above $110 a barrel amid escalating Middle East tensions, and Nasdaq 100 futures were down 1.32% at the time of CoinDesk's report. U.S. weekly jobless claims data was scheduled for release later on Thursday.

Solana completes Alpenglow switch

On the technology side, Solana validators activated the Alpenglow consensus protocol on Wednesday, October 21, The Block reported. Anza, a core engineering firm for the network, said the upgrade reached mainnet-beta at slot 459,653,000 at approximately 14:00 UTC, retiring TowerBFT, the consensus mechanism Solana had used since its launch in March 2020.

According to Anza, Alpenglow condenses Solana's previous two-step confirmation process into a single step, reducing finality to about 150 milliseconds from 12.8 seconds, a change aimed at exchanges crediting deposits and merchants processing payments. Anza first published the design in May 2025 and said it underwent public testing, red teaming, penetration testing, migration rehearsals and a security competition before deployment. Further changes, including a block-propagation design called Rotor, do not yet have confirmed release dates.

The upgrade did not shield the token from the broader decline. SOL fell 2.4% to around $104, CoinDesk reported.