Zcash was the standout mover among larger cryptocurrencies on October 21, 2026, gaining about 11% to trade near $1,263. Bitcoin held near $83,000, up about 1.16% over 24 hours, while the overall crypto market stayed choppy.
The movers
Bitcoin’s share of total market capitalisation was about 59.2% and the combined market cap of the tracked cryptocurrencies was roughly $2.81 trillion, with 24-hour volume near $9.77 billion. Among the top ten by market cap, XRP gained about 2.4%, BNB about 1.9%, Ethereum about 1.7% and Solana about 1.2%, while Tron slipped about 0.7%.
The day’s biggest gainer overall was Doodles, up about 108.7%, and the biggest loser was Alaya Governance Token, down about 47.7%. Among sectors, privacy tokens performed best at about +7.7% and asset-backed tokens were weakest at about -0.5%.
How to read a day like this
Large daily swings in smaller tokens are normal and frequently reverse. A privacy-category rally can be driven by a handful of large trades rather than broad demand, and percentage gains on low-volume assets often overstate how much money actually moved.
Prices in this article are snapshots from market data providers, not live quotes, and they are not investment advice. Cryptocurrency is highly volatile, and you should never invest money you cannot afford to lose.
What we did not do
We did not verify these prices directly against an exchange order book. All figures are quoted from the market reporting cited below.
Sources
- altlar.com — Crypto Market Summary for October 21, 2026
- La Nacion — Cotización de las principales divisas digitales al 21 de octubre
- Exa — ETH daily market data
- Benzinga — Crypto market gains as oil and yields cool
- Honest Fred — Bitcoin Tests $80,000 as DeFi Tokens Lead Recovery
