“After all, we only find out who's swimming naked when the tide goes out,” wrote Warren Buffett in his letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders for fiscal 2001. The third quarter of 2026 was a rising tide for cryptocurrencies, and CoinGecko's quarterly report allows us to look at who took to the water, and with how much leverage.
Three quarters of decline, then a summer of catch-up. The quarterly report published by CoinGecko on October 15 puts the increase in the total capitalization of the crypto market at 39.6% between July and September 2026. It came close to 3,000 billion dollars. This is the best quarter since the end of 2024.
But spot volumes fell further as prices rose and leverage took over the empty space. We noted in early October that ether had beaten bitcoin in the third quarter as liquidity melted. The report gives detailed figures and six graphs which we reproduce here.
The numbers to remember
The market recovered 840 billion dollars in three months, more than half of which was in the month of August alone.
Ether outperformed all large caps thanks to $3.1 billion in net ETF inflows.
Average daily volume declined for the third consecutive quarter.
Binance now holds over 42% of the centralized spot market.
Open leveraged positions in perpetuals exceed $100 billion for the first time in a year.
CoinGecko measures $840 billion rebound focused on August
The raw figure first. The market recovered 840 billion dollars in three months and went from 2,100 billion at the end of June to 2,960 billion as of September 30. The quarterly peak then came on September 21, at 3,000 billion. More than half of this increase takes place in a single month. Capitalization jumped 21.8% in August (490 billion) after the announcement by the US Treasury of at least a doubling of its long-term bond buybacks. Spot Bitcoin ETFs also saw net inflows all month.
Even the failure of the CLARITY Act, rejected during a procedural vote in the Senate on September 15, did not break the dynamic. The market even reached its highest of the quarter six days later. There remains one detail that stings: despite this 40% increase, the total capitalization still showed -4% since January 1 at the close of the quarter. The year started a little above 3,000 billion and the market has not yet returned there.
Look at the green bars on the chart, not just the purple line. Average daily volume fell 8.6% in the quarter to $73.3 billion. This is also the third quarterly decline in a row. July was 57.7 billion per day, September was 94.8 billion. Buyers returned late in the quarter and in fewer numbers than in January. The full study details this data over 57 pages.
Ethereum signs the best quarter of the majors with 71% increase
Ether ended the quarter at $2,684, up 71%. No other large cap does better, including bitcoin. Three quarters of market decline therefore end there. The engine can be seen in the flows of US spot Ethereum ETFs, which absorbed a net $3.1 billion in three months and erased all outflows from the first half.
The chart tells something other than the price. ETH daily spot volume fell 23.2% over the period, to $11.5 billion from $15 billion in the second quarter. An asset that gains 71% with a quarter less volume is an asset that few people sell and few people buy, apart from ETFs and their 3.1 billion.
The Glamsterdam update is still not on the mainnet. It had already slipped for the first time in the spring and is currently being deployed on the testnets. Sepolia finally activated it on October 6.
Hyperliquid and Robinhood Chain have captured the attention of traders
On August 19, Donald Trump announced that CFTC Chairman Michael Selig was working to bring Hyperliquid back to the American market. HYPE takes 40.5% in four days and touches 82 dollars, a record at that time. The token then continued to climb to an all-time high of $98 on September 23. Its average daily volume increased by 35.2% over the quarter, to $850 million. Hyperliquid is one of the few platforms whose activity has followed price.
Robinhood Chain taken over by memecoins
Robinhood Chain is the other surprise of the quarter. Publicly launched on July 1, the American broker's blockchain generated $88.9 billion in volume in three months and processed 9.5 million transactions per day on average. This places it as the third most active channel. Vlad Tenev sold it as the gateway to tokenized stocks. However, memecoins have moved ahead. Daily volume for native DEXs increased from $1.3 million on launch day to a peak of $3.5 billion on September 4, driven by memecoin Cashcat and launchpads like Pons. The peak of 26.9 million transactions on August 12 corresponds to the Spritehood NFT mint and a flurry of token launches, most of which fell off immediately.
Spot exchange volumes decline as leverage exceeds 100 billion
The top ten centralized exchanges processed $1.65 trillion in spot volume in the third quarter, 14.2% less than in the second. July marked a monthly low at 443.6 billion, before a rebound to 712.3 billion in August. Binance emerges as a winner from the shortage. Its market share climbs to 42.7% compared to 38.7% in the previous quarter, and it is the only platform in the top 10 to exceed 10%. Upbit experienced the most turbulent quarter with a drop of 33.7% over three months then a rebound of 83.9% in September. Bitget leaves the ranking and is now eleventh. The platform was already running at 15.7 then 18.7 billion per month in July and August before its September hack. It was still 37.8 billion in June.
Open interest at $102 billion on perpetuals
The lever did not wait. The open interest of the top ten perpetual exchanges, that is to say the total amount of leveraged positions still open, climbed 40.6% to close the quarter at $102.2 billion. The threshold of 100 billion had not held since the third quarter of 2025. It was touched on January 14 and 15 before evaporating in a few days. The two previous episodes above this level correspond to the end of the last bull market, from May to November 2025, and the weeks following Trump's re-election at the end of 2024.
But the recovery remains uneven. Binance added $12.7 billion in open interest alone, and Bybit, MEXC, Gate, Bitget, and Kraken are all up over 40%. Conversely, KuCoin lost 41.2% and Deribit 18.9% over the same period.
