Crypto

Bitcoin Holds Near 80000 While Ethereum Chooses Care Over Speed and Stablecoin Payments Surge

By Crypt0 · Oct 25, 2026

Sunday brought a market that rewards patience. Bitcoin traded near 80,600 dollars in the early Sunday market snapshot, the total crypto market held near 2.70 trillion dollars, and breadth stayed wide with most top coins gaining ground over the day. That calm surface tells a richer story when read beside the builders and the payment networks. Ethereum developers chose extra care for a major upgrade, payment activity kept climbing through familiar card networks, and economists kept their eyes on the Federal Reserve meeting that closes on October 28. The thread through all of it is maturity. Price action stayed orderly, protocol work stayed careful, and real usage kept growing in the background.

Bitcoin spent the weekend proving how steady a large market can look while headlines stay loud. CoinCodex put Bitcoin at 80,598 dollars in its October 25 snapshot, with Ethereum near 2,350 dollars and Bitcoin representing about 60 percent of total market value. Trading over the prior day stayed inside a compact range near 79,200 dollars at the low end and 81,000 dollars at the high end, and the market cap for the whole sector edged higher. The setup matters because the next big macro input arrives soon. A Reuters poll taken from October 16 to October 20 found 94 of 100 economists expecting the Federal Reserve to keep its rate range at 3.75 percent to 4.00 percent at the October 27 and 28 meeting, while all 100 respondents expected a move in December. For savers and builders, a steady October meeting plus a clearly watched December meeting gives planning room, and Bitcoin holders get a week where the calendar does the talking.

Ethereum gave the clearest example of careful building this week. Core developers moved the Glamsterdam activation on the Hoodi test network out of its October 26 slot during All Core Developers Execution meeting 248, after ChainSecurity analysis from October 13 examined how EIP 8037 and EIP 8038 repricing could interact with contracts already running on the main network. The concern centered on a case where remaining gas could grow during execution, which could let a contract finish a failure handling step that earlier rules would have reversed. Sepolia, where Glamsterdam activated on October 6, stays on its own path, and mainnet timing stays open for a later announcement. The Hoodi move also set aside the planned rise to a 200 million gas limit for that test network. That sequence reads as strength, with a test network doing exactly what test networks exist to do, giving developers a safe place to find an edge case before real money meets it.

Stablecoin payments gave the week its most practical evidence of adoption. Allium reported 482 billion dollars in stablecoin payments from January through September, up 45 percent from the same period a year earlier, while total supply rose just 0.4 percent to 305 billion dollars at the end of September. September alone set a monthly record at 72 billion dollars, third quarter payment value grew 51 percent year over year, and payment counts jumped 71 percent to 1.04 billion transactions over the first nine months. The average payment settled at 462 dollars, compared with 544 dollars earlier, a pattern that points toward routine business use. Visa reported more than 160 stablecoin linked card programs worldwide, with volume on those programs up nearly 200 percent year over year and an annualized settlement run rate above 20 billion dollars. Mastercard expanded through its acquisition of BVNK, and card spending funded by stablecoins grew roughly tenfold to 3.9 billion dollars in the third quarter. Business transfers, payroll, and cross border payments led the use cases, and AI agent payments doubled to 68.3 million transactions in the third quarter.

Read together, the three threads point the same way. Bitcoin held a large and orderly market while the Federal Reserve calendar came into focus. Ethereum chose a longer review window for a change that touches every contract on its network. Stablecoins kept moving through card rails and business payrolls at a faster pace, even as the total pool of stablecoins stayed nearly level. For readers, the useful takeaway is simple and encouraging. Sound money networks gain value when they stay steady under headlines, when developers protect existing users first, and when everyday payments work through tools people already trust. The week ahead brings a Federal Reserve decision, fresh test network work, and more payment data, and each one gives builders another chance to show that this market grows by being useful first.

Sources

• CoinCodex daily market update for October 25, 2026
• Reuters Federal Reserve poll, October 20, 2026
• MEXC on the Glamsterdam Hoodi postponement
• Crypto Briefing on Allium stablecoin payments

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