Santiment said in its Oct. 24 weekly report that recent market stress has exposed a split between crypto prices, social sentiment, and on-chain investor behavior.
While most altcoins struggled, privacy coins stood out. Monero (XMR) rose 6.6% this week and Zcash (ZEC) gained 6.2%, making them the strongest-performing large-cap crypto assets in the period. Monero’s social discussion volume also climbed by nearly 50% from the previous week.
Security concerns hit sentiment, but privacy coins moved higher
According to Santiment, crypto sentiment took a hit after a security-related development early in the week. On Oct. 21, PHP released an emergency patch to fix two vulnerabilities, each carrying a severity score of 9.2. The flaws could have allowed remote code execution, and some technical details had already leaked before the patch was issued.
The incident did not directly affect the Bitcoin protocol, but Santiment said it raised concerns about the security of crypto-related websites and infrastructure. As the news spread, most digital assets turned weaker. Bitcoin fell 0.3% for the week and Ethereum lost 1.1%. Quant (QNT) dropped 10.3%, while Uniswap (UNI) declined 3.8%.
Privacy coins moved the other way. XMR gained 6.6% and ZEC added 6.2%. Santiment said the move reflected stronger market attention on privacy-focused assets as security risks became a bigger topic. When investor concern shifts from price volatility to data and information security, the privacy narrative can attract more interest.
Still, rising social attention does not automatically mean sustained buying demand. Santiment pointed to another altcoin example where price action and user participation diverged.
BAT rally came with a drop in participation before the price peak
Between Oct. 8 and Oct. 15, Basic Attention Token (BAT) jumped from $0.1026 to $0.2157, a gain of more than 100% in one week, despite the absence of any major news catalyst.
On-chain data showed that in the early stage of the rally, growth in BAT active addresses outpaced the rise in price, signaling a sharp increase in market participation. That changed on Oct. 13, when active addresses peaked two days before the token’s price high. By Oct. 20, active addresses had fallen 46% from their peak, while the price was down only about 10% over the same period.
That left BAT with a clear gap between price and participation. Even with the token still trading near elevated levels, on-chain engagement had already cooled. Santiment said this kind of divergence is worth watching because price can lag changes in user activity. If active addresses start falling first, the participation base behind a short-term rally may already be weakening.
For altcoins, where sentiment often drives short-term moves, the case shows that rising social buzz, higher prices, and stronger on-chain participation are not the same thing. A token can still look strong on the surface while the underlying momentum fades.
Santiment added that changes in active addresses for a single token should not be treated as a direct signal that a top is in place. Volume, fund flows, and the token’s actual use case still need to be considered together.
Bitcoin whales kept accumulating while Ethereum saw a large exchange outflow
Against that backdrop, larger Bitcoin holders continued to add exposure. Santiment said wallets holding between 10 and 10,000 BTC now control about 13.71 million BTC in total.
Compared with four to five weeks ago, that cohort has added about 110,000 BTC, the fastest sustained accumulation pace seen so far in 2026. Santiment said only the accumulation phase from February to April came close this year.
Smaller wallets have not shown a clear exit either. The number of wallets holding less than 0.01 BTC is still rising, suggesting that large holders and small holders have been accumulating at the same time, rather than a simple pattern of retail selling into whale buying. That stands in contrast to the short-term fear seen in the market while Bitcoin was under pressure.
Santiment also noted an important limitation: wallet growth does not map perfectly to net buying by distinct investors. One entity can control multiple addresses, and internal transfers by exchanges or custodians can affect the data. For that reason, the figures are more useful for tracking changes in supply distribution and holding structure than for calling an imminent Bitcoin rebound.
Ethereum showed a different signal in exchange flow data. On Oct. 22, about 170,000 ETH left centralized exchanges on a net basis, the largest single-day net outflow in at least three months. The timing matched the period when market fear was most visible.
For the full week, net outflows totaled about 75,600 ETH, which means inflows on other trading days offset part of that one-day move. Santiment said a transfer of that size likely involved large wallets rather than ordinary retail activity.
Bitcoin moved the other way. BTC posted net exchange inflows on six of the seven days in the week, for a cumulative net inflow of about 10,600 BTC. That left the two assets with different exchange-flow patterns: ETH moved off exchanges, while BTC kept moving onto them.
In general, assets leaving exchanges can point to self-custody or other holding channels, while inflows can increase the amount available for trading. Santiment said those flows should not be read as direct evidence of buying or selling, since custody migrations, wallet management, and other internal transfers can also produce large movements.
The firm added that, relative to the total supply of both assets, the weekly changes were still small. On their own, one week of exchange balance changes has limited value in forecasting price direction.
Fear faded quickly and MVRV stayed near neutral
Despite the week’s negative headlines, Santiment said bearish sentiment did not keep building. The average ratio of positive to negative Bitcoin-related social posts was 1.09 this week, up from 0.97 a week earlier.
The ratio reached 1.32 on Oct. 20, then fell to 0.96 on Oct. 22 as the security story spread. A reading below 1 means negative discussion briefly outnumbered positive discussion. That shift did not last long. About 24 hours later, the ratio recovered to 1.08.
Total Bitcoin social discussion volume was roughly flat from the previous week. In Santiment’s reading, sentiment worsened for a short period, but the scale of discussion did not expand in a way that would suggest a prolonged wave of panic across social platforms.
On-chain valuation metrics also remained relatively neutral. Santiment reported Bitcoin’s 30-day MVRV at -2.5% and 365-day MVRV at +0.6%. The metric compares current market value with on-chain cost basis and is often used to gauge the average profit or loss of holders across different time horizons.
That leaves short-term holders with a modest unrealized loss, while longer-term holders are close to break-even on average. Santiment said the market has not entered an obvious extreme profit or loss zone. In that context, the brief drop in the positive-to-negative discussion ratio to 0.96, followed by a recovery within about 24 hours, looked more like a short-lived sentiment shock than a classic capitulation event.
Prices, narratives, and on-chain behavior are no longer moving together
Taken together, this week’s data points to three parallel shifts. Negative news hurt risk appetite and weighed on most altcoins, but privacy coins such as XMR and ZEC drew more attention through their own narrative. At the same time, large Bitcoin wallets kept accumulating and Ethereum posted a sizable exchange outflow, showing that on-chain positioning did not weaken in step with short-term pessimism. Social sentiment also recovered quickly, while MVRV stayed neutral.
Santiment’s broader point is that market fear does not automatically mean capital is leaving across the board, and rising social attention or higher prices do not always mean real participation is strengthening at the same pace. In the altcoin market, the gap between price action, public discussion, and on-chain activity may offer a more useful read on short-term market structure than price changes alone.