Crypto News: 2nd Week of October 2026 — Zcash Upgrades, ETH Accumulation & BTC Mining Surge

October 17, 2026  ·  5 min read

The second week of October brought a string of bullish fundamentals across multiple chains. Zcash detailed its upcoming Crosslink protocol upgrade, on-chain data revealed a significant institutional Ethereum accumulation event, and Bitcoin mining profitability reached its highest level in six months as the network hash rate pushed to new all-time highs.

Zcash Announces Crosslink: Faster Finality Coming

The Zcash Foundation and Electric Coin Company jointly published a technical overview of the upcoming Crosslink protocol upgrade, scheduled for activation in late October. Crosslink introduces a hybrid consensus layer that pairs Zcash's existing proof-of-work chain with a proof-of-stake finalisation mechanism.

In practical terms, the upgrade means:

• Transparent (t-addr) transactions will achieve finality in under 2 minutes, down from the current ~20 minute average
• ZEC staking rewards will become available to holders who delegate to Crosslink validators
• Network security will become less dependent on a small number of large mining pools

ZEC rose 8% on the announcement, closing the week at $42.80. Trading volume in ZEC pairs on instant exchanges including FixedFloat approximately doubled compared to the prior week as traders positioned ahead of the upgrade.

Institutions Accumulate 18,000 ETH in a Single Day

On-chain analytics platform Glassnode identified a single-day accumulation of approximately18,000 ETH (roughly $60M at current prices) by wallets matching the behaviour profile of institutional buyers — large, infrequent transactions into cold storage with no subsequent movement.

The event occurred on October 13th, coinciding with the Ethereum Foundation's announcement of the Pectra upgrade timeline. Pectra is the next major Ethereum upgrade, expected to introduce account abstraction improvements, validator limit increases, and improved blob throughput for Layer 2 networks.

ETH gained 7% over the week, closing near $3,320. The ETH/BTC ratio improved marginally, reaching 0.049 — its highest level in four weeks.

Bitcoin Mining Profitability at 6-Month High

Bitcoin's network hash rate grew 3% week-over-week to reach 720 EH/s, a new all-time high. Despite increased competition, miner profitability metrics improved significantly:

• Hash price (revenue per TH/s per day) reached $0.062, the highest level since April
• Block fee revenue averaged $1.8M per block, up from $1.4M the previous week
• Miner outflows to exchanges declined 15% week-over-week, suggesting miners are HODLing rather than selling

The improved economics are partly driven by increased on-chain activity in Runes — the BTC-native fungible token protocol — which has revived fee market competition even between halving cycles.

Market Correction: BTC Pulls Back from $70K

Despite the positive fundamentals, Bitcoin experienced a 4% intra-week correction, pulling back from $70,200 to $67,400 before recovering to close the week near $68,000. The pullback was widely characterised as healthy given the speed of the previous week's rally. Leveraged long positions worth $420M were liquidated during the dip, resetting funding rates to neutral.

Analysts remained broadly optimistic for Q4 2026. Price targets published during the week ranged from $80,000 (conservative base case) to $120,000 (bull case contingent on a Fed rate cut and continued ETF inflows). No major analyst published a bearish Q4 target below the current price.