Ethereum

One year has passed since the massive crash in the cryptocurrency market on October 10, 2025, and liquidity in Bitcoin and Ethereum is recovering, CoinDesk reported based on its analysis of buy and sell orders on major centralized exchanges. The study found that the value of buy and sell orders near the current prices of both assets exceeded levels on the day of the crash, while order values for the other altcoins examined continued to decline and spot trading volumes also fell below levels seen at the time, showing uneven recovery across the market. The sharp sell-off on October 10, 2025 came after U.S. President Donald Trump announced 100% tariffs on Chinese goods, with BTC falling from around $122,600 to briefly below $105,000, triggering the forced liquidation of more than $19 billion in leveraged positions in a single day. As of October 7, BTC orders within 1% above and below the current price totaled about $11.7 million, up roughly 75% from the day of the crash, while ETH also rose about 75% within the same range to reach about $5.3 million. Meanwhile, among the altcoins examined, order values within 5% above and below the price fell by about one-third from the start of 2025 to about $2 million, and orders within 1% declined by about one-sixth. Weekly spot trading volume on centralized exchanges averaged about $279 billion over the four weeks through September 27, down about two-thirds from about $801 billion in the week of the crash.

Startale Japan has begun offering digital retail bonds with a 5% annual interest rate. Interest payments and redemption will use JPYSC, a trust-type yen-denominated stablecoin. The bonds are managed on infrastructure built with Hyperledger Fabric, while JPYSC is issued on Ethereum, meaning the bonds and the funds for interest payments do not sit on the same blockchain. The company sees the connection costs of horizontal specialization as a challenge, and has set out a vertical integration strategy that provides everything from base layers such as Strium, a blockchain dedicated to on-chain finance, through to JPYSC and wallets. This initiative is positioned as the current form of efforts to promote the adoption of JPYSC.

Thailand's SEC announced 11 notifications on the 8th permitting the domestic establishment of cryptocurrency spot ETFs. In the initial phase, the only eligible cryptocurrencies are Bitcoin and Ethereum, and the rules take effect on the 16th. The move comes against the backdrop of mutual funds and private funds having been able to invest only in overseas cryptocurrency spot ETFs, and the SEC explained that it aims to expand investor opportunities and strengthen operators' capabilities by adding domestic cryptocurrency spot ETFs as permissible investment targets within existing investment limits. The notifications require funds to pursue passive management aimed at tracking the price of the target cryptocurrency, and mandate that the average net exposure to a single cryptocurrency over the fiscal year be at least 80 percent of total net assets. Asset custody is limited to digital asset custodians regulated by the SEC, listing and trading are restricted to the Stock Exchange of Thailand only, and securities companies are not permitted to lend funds for the purchase of spot ETFs. In the initial phase, the SEC did not permit the issuance or sale of alternative products such as depositary receipts referencing overseas cryptocurrency ETFs, and also prohibited securities companies from brokering investments in overseas cryptocurrency ETFs for customers other than institutional investors and ultra-high-net-worth individuals.

JPMorgan Chase has launched JLTXX, a tokenized US money market fund on Ethereum aimed at institutional clients, as the bank moves to build reserve infrastructure for future US stablecoin issuers. The bank is working alongside BlackRock to provide tokenized money market products that could support stablecoin reserves, with both groups building fund infrastructure aligned with new GENIUS Act rules that require regulated backing for US stablecoin issuers by 2027. JPMorgan, a US bank and financial holding company with a reported market value of about $876.1b, already runs a global payments, markets, and custody network that gives it a ready-made base to plug tokenized money market funds into real world transaction flows. The push adds to an already heavy technology and AI expense line, while players like Citigroup and Bank of America are also pursuing digital asset infrastructure.

Bitcoin bounced back to $82,000 on Friday after the cryptocurrency market recovered from its late-Thursday low, lifted by remarks from President Donald Trump that eased fears of a U.S. strike on Iran. In a post on Truth Social at 12:17 p.m. Eastern time, Trump said the United States will definitely not attack Iran before the midterm elections on November 3, describing talks with Iran as productive, though the U.S. blockade will remain in full and complete effect. Bitcoin selling lost steam near $80,300 after the post, and the price has since recovered to touch $82,000, with Ether, XRP, Solana and other major coins also paring their losses. The selloff had begun roughly 24 hours earlier amid fears of a fresh escalation in military conflict between the United States and Iran, after Axios reported on October 7 that the Pentagon had ordered U.S. Central Command to prepare for a return to major military operations in Iran, driving WTI crude futures from $89 to $93.20 before they fell sharply after Trump's post and were last trading at $90.69. Meanwhile, concern over Bunker Mode, proposed by Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake, is being contested, with Yehuda Lindell, a leading cryptographer at Coinbase, calling the worry mere FUD, while Hasib Qureshi of Dragonfly described it as a genuinely sober warning, and Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said the risk from AI-accelerated mathematics is real but pointed to lattice structures rather than elliptic curve cryptography. Analysts are watching the $81,000 level as key support for Bitcoin, with Vikram Subburaj, chief executive of India-based exchange Giottus, telling CoinDesk that a break below $81,000 could send the market down to $80,000 and then to a more important on-chain support near $77,200, while BitDelta said $82,000 is a key resistance level and a drop below $80,316 would increase downside risk.

Analysts at JPMorgan led by Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou said in a report on Wednesday that roughly $50 billion has flowed into digital assets this year, an annualised pace of about $66 billion, above the $52 billion-a-year level recorded in May but still only about half of last year's pace. Crypto ETF flows had been a drag, with heavy outflows in May and June, before improving from August onward, and are now positive for the year. However, cumulative ETF flows remain negative when measured from the crypto market downturn that began on October 10, 2025. Meanwhile, institutional positioning in bitcoin and ether futures on the CME has increased over the past two months, with bitcoin positioning moving above its previous peak and ether positioning approaching its October 2025 high. Bitcoin miners remain net sellers this year, but total net selling is relatively small at about $1.8 billion, with purchases through corporate balance sheets coming mostly from listed companies. Strategy bought bitcoin at a rapid pace early in the year and accounted for a large share of total inflows. The analysts concluded that the pickup in both ETF flows and futures positioning in the third quarter points to greater participation from retail and institutional investors alike, building positive flow momentum heading into the fourth quarter.

Michael Selig, chairman of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, said in an October 5 speech that the CFTC and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission had produced a joint interpretation on crypto assets, expressing the view that Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP and others are not securities in principle. In March, the two agencies published a joint interpretation classifying crypto assets into five categories: digital commodities, digital collectibles, digital tools, stablecoins, and digital securities. Of these, the three categories of digital commodities, digital collectibles, and digital tools are deemed not to be securities in principle. Digital commodities include Bitcoin, Ethereum, and XRP, as well as Solana, Stellar, and Tezos, and are positioned as assets whose prices arise not from expectations of profits based on the managerial efforts of a company or other entity, but from a functioning crypto asset system or from supply and demand. The joint interpretation also indicated that even if a crypto asset itself is not a security, it may fall under federal securities law if sold as part of an investment contract. In his speech, Chairman Selig also explained a new regulatory framework for retail crypto asset trading based on this classification, and the CFTC on the same day published an advance notice of proposed rulemaking covering retail transactions involving margin, leverage, and lending, and began soliciting public comment. Under the new framework, the agency is considering establishing a market segment called the Crypto Asset Market that would allow eligible crypto asset exchanges to operate under federal regulation, and has also presented a proposal to require exchanges that manage customer assets in aggregate to provide proof of reserves backing the crypto assets they hold.

Strive purchased 2,000 bitcoin for approximately $169 million, nearly six times the 334 bitcoin that Strategy announced buying the previous day, bringing Strive's total holdings to 29,462 bitcoin at an average price of $84,422 per coin. CEO Matt Cole said SETA preferred stock sales accounted for 61.5% of the capital raised, with warrant exercises generating another $56.7 million, and Strive now carries roughly $1.29 billion of SETA preferred stock with about $168 million in annual dividend obligations. Separately, the SEC approved the CBOE's request to list the first US products delivering three times the daily returns of bitcoin and ether, to be operated by Volatility Shares using regulated bitcoin and ether futures rather than the tokens themselves, doubling the previous 2X cap on US crypto funds. The CFTC also floated a new federal framework for leveraged retail crypto trading, proposing a crypto asset market registration category with token listing standards, market surveillance and anti-manipulation rules, proof of reserves for pooled customer assets, capital requirements, segregation of customer assets, risk disclosures, and KYC and anti-money laundering controls, while stating it cannot require crypto to trade on its platforms without Congress. Treasury withdrew a 2020 self-hosted wallet rule and a 2023 crypto mixer reporting rule, citing concerns over a chilling effect on legitimate activity, and Rain filed an application with the OCC to establish Rain National Trust Bank, following similar moves by Modern Treasury as community banks sue the OCC over federal trust charters for crypto companies. Ondo Finance also launched Ondo private markets with tokenized pre-IPO AI exposure, beginning with an unnamed pre-IPO AI business, offering tokenized notes linked to the company's economic performance rather than actual shares.

Ethereum is accelerating its network update ahead of testing for the Glamsterdam upgrade package, which will increase transaction capacity by more than threefold. This upgrade involves raising the Gas Limit on the Ethereum Mainnet along with the operation of Prysm and validators within the system, with testing on the Sepolia testnet before actual deployment. Reports indicate that Ethereum needs to increase its transaction processing capability to handle continuously growing usage. The development of Glamsterdam is therefore seen as a key step in the network's infrastructure upgrade plan.

According to August cryptocurrency trading statistics published on October 2 by the Japan Virtual and Crypto Assets Exchange Association, domestic spot trading volume rose to 2.6338 trillion units, roughly double the previous month and the highest level in one year and five months, since March 2025. Trading value also increased 13.4% from the previous month to 76.43 billion yen. Prices rose sharply in August, with the NADA Bitcoin Index showing bitcoin up 20.7% from about 10.33 million yen at the end of July to about 12.47 million yen at the end of August, while the NADA Ethereum Index showed ether up 27.3% from about 306,000 yen to about 389,700 yen. The rally took hold from August 19 onward, after the U.S. Treasury Department announced it would double the size of its long-term government bond buybacks, pushing down U.S. long-term interest rates, and U.S. President Trump acknowledged that the U.S. government is discussing a plan for large-scale bitcoin purchases. Money also returned to U.S. spot bitcoin and ether ETFs, with combined net inflows of about 2.6 billion dollars in the week through August 21, the largest since October 2025. Margin trading value rose 19.0% from the previous month to 746.5 billion yen, while user deposit balances increased 22.2% to 3.5111 trillion yen. Meanwhile, users' bitcoin holdings fell 2.9% from the previous month to 170,344 BTC, the lowest level since March 2025, while the value of those holdings rose 22.2% to 2.1396 trillion yen on higher prices, suggesting that profit-taking selling emerged during the rally.

Citi analyst Alex Saunders raised his base-case price forecast for bitcoin to $113,000 from $82,000. The token hovered near $85,000 on Friday as bond yields briefly eased and seasonal trends turned supportive, with ether also rising as strategists pointed to signs of a bullish trend for cryptocurrencies. Fundstrat head of digital assets Sean Farrell said seasonality is becoming a tailwind, noting October has historically been crypto's strongest month with around an 80% win rate, and that the setup shifted in a bullish direction over the past couple of days. Federal Reserve rhetoric has become somewhat more measured, and a weak jobs report has reduced expectations for further rate hikes, with more than 75% of market participants now expecting policymakers to hold rates steady at their October meeting. Farrell cautioned that continued stress in sovereign bonds and credit could lead to a short-term drawdown in crypto, but said the more stress priced in without breaking bitcoin, the better the forward risk/reward becomes, and pointed to a recent decline in 2-year real yields that could support the token by reducing the appeal of short-term government debt.

The US economy added just 29,000 jobs in September, well below expectations of 89,000, while the unemployment rate rose to 4.2% against an expected 4.1%, a miss that host Scott Melker said weakens the case for further Fed rate hikes and points toward cuts. Prior months were revised sharply lower, with July cut by 31,000 to 10,000 and August by 29,000 to 133,000, leaving combined employment 60,000 lower than previously reported, and wage growth slowed to 0.1% monthly and 3% annually. Separately, the SEC proposed dedicated custody rules that would let registered investment advisors, investment funds and business development companies hold crypto assets directly under federal securities law, with state-chartered trust companies able to serve as permitted crypto custodians and client assets segregated from the trust company's own assets. In other news, Fiserv launched the Roughrider stablecoin, a bank-to-bank settlement token on Solana serving a North Dakota network of more than 90 banks and credit unions, and the Ethereum Foundation launched zero-knowledge APIs, built with the Open Anonymity Project, that let users pay for AI models without revealing identity. Near Intents was hit by a 3.8 million dollar exploit, with no customer funds lost, and another Trump meme coin dinner was advertised for top token investors.

The Ethereum Foundation launched zkAPI on Thursday, a system that lets users pay for AI models and other pay-per-use APIs without revealing who they are. It was developed together with the Open Anonymity Project and is now live on the Ethereum mainnet. To use it, users deposit tokens such as ETH or USDC into a vault contract on Ethereum, which records the balance as a private note. Client-side software generates a Zero-Knowledge Proof to show that a request is backed by a funded note without revealing which note it is. The zkAPI server verifies this and issues a temporary API key with a capped spending limit, then deducts usage from the private balance when the key expires. A Nullifier serial number is published every time a payment is made to prevent double-spending. The system does not provide network-level privacy, since the gateway may link requests from a static IP address and sessions may be re-linked through prompt content. The GitHub repository notes that the protocol is still experimental. zkAPI puts into practice the ZK API Usage Credits concept, a design by Davide Crapis and Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin published on the Ethereum Research forum on February 11. Crapis leads the foundation's dAI team, which was set up in September 2025, and the team also developed ERC-8004, a standard for AI agent identity that launched on mainnet in January. The blog post announcing zkAPI was written by Vittorio Rivabella of the dAI team.

Matt Hougan, chief investment officer of crypto asset manager Bitwise, wrote in a September 30 blog post about why crypto assets rose despite the stalling of the Clarity Act. On September 15, the U.S. Senate voted 49 to 50 against ending debate on a motion to proceed with the bill, after which Bitcoin rose 8% and Ethereum gained 7%. The bill's final wording would have barred exchanges and others from paying stablecoin interest to customers and imposed fines of up to 5 million dollars per violation, but with the bill effectively dead, the GENIUS Act, which regulates only issuers, remains in place, allowing Coinbase and others to keep offering rewards. Meanwhile, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission issued a five-year "innovation exemption" on September 17 permitting on-chain trading of tokenized U.S. equities, and on September 25 it stated that for a functioning network, merely announcing a token buyback does not by itself establish that the token is a security. Hougan acknowledged the risk that a change of administration in January 2029 could lead the SEC and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to alter course, but concluded that crypto "got better rules faster at the expense of long-term certainty."

Citigroup has raised its 12-month price forecasts for Bitcoin and Ethereum, CoinDesk reported on October 1. In a report dated September 30, Citi lifted its 12-month Bitcoin forecast to $113,000 from $82,000, and also revised its Ethereum forecast upward to $3,028 from $2,240. The bank cited increased activity in the crypto market, a favorable macroeconomic environment, and renewed inflows into ETFs as reasons. Citi expects that as advisors and brokers gradually increase their allocations to Bitcoin, inflows into ETFs and similar products will continue steadily, though more gradually than before, and it anticipates $5 billion of inflows over the next 12 months. On the regulatory front, Citi noted that while the U.S. Senate rejected a procedural vote 49 to 50 on September 15 to begin consideration of the crypto market structure bill known as the CLARITY Act, the Securities and Exchange Commission subsequently issued a series of rules, easing pessimistic sentiment in the market. Citi also pointed out that momentum in the crypto market has recovered, helped by a weaker dollar after the U.S. Treasury expanded buybacks of long-term government bonds.

US spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded net inflows of about 6.34 billion dollars in the third quarter of 2026, roughly 982.7 billion yen. According to SoSoValue data, July brought 172 million dollars, August 3.52 billion dollars, and September 2.65 billion dollars, a sharp reversal from net outflows of about 5 billion dollars in the second quarter and the strongest quarter of the year. According to CoinGlass, Bitcoin rose 42.71% during the quarter, its biggest gain since the fourth quarter of 2024 and its best third-quarter performance since 2017. However, on September 30 it saw net outflows of about 149 million dollars, ending a nine-session streak of net inflows that had gathered about 3.1 billion dollars. Meanwhile, spot Ethereum ETFs attracted about 3.05 billion dollars in net inflows during the quarter, and Ethereum rose about 71% over the period, its largest third-quarter gain on record. Total net assets of spot Bitcoin ETFs have reached 107.98 billion dollars. In Japan, crypto ETFs are not yet permitted, but following the revised Financial Instruments and Exchange Act enacted in July 2026, they are reportedly expected to be allowed as early as 2028.

U.S. spot Ethereum ETFs recorded $17.1 million in net inflows on September 28, extending their consecutive inflow streak to seven trading sessions, with cumulative net inflows reaching about $835 million and the $850 million mark now in sight. The seven-session streak includes a $143.7 million inflow on September 18, followed by inflows of $270 million, $162.2 million, $104.5 million, $66.1 million, $87 million and $1.7 million in subsequent sessions, with BlackRock's ETHA accounting for $15.4 million and 21Shares' TETH for $1.7 million most recently. On September 29, Ethereum rose about 1% to $2,745 as traders increased exposure across perpetual futures markets, with open interest up roughly $700 million and total liquidations reaching $83.17 million, of which longs accounted for $38.16 million and shorts $45.01 million. Ethereum's next major upgrade, Glamsterdam, is scheduled to go live on the Sepolia testnet on October 6, with mainnet launch targeted for the fourth quarter of 2026 though no firm date has been set, and it includes enshrined proposer-builder separation, block-level access lists and a revamp of gas fee pricing. The on-chain economy is also expanding: Ethereum DeFi total value locked rose from about $42 billion on August 19 to $53.65 billion on September 28, an increase of roughly $11.5 billion, or 27.4%, in about six weeks; the circulating value of tokenized equities reached about $3.14 billion, up about 947% from roughly $300 million in September 2025; and the circulating value of tokenized U.S. Treasuries reached $14.72 billion, doubling over the past year.

Robinhood announced on September 29 that it will offer crypto perpetual futures to eligible customers in the United States, with trading to become available through its own app within the coming months. The offering covers eight assets: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, XRP, Dogecoin, Cardano, Chainlink, and Hyperliquid. Bitcoin and Ethereum will support leverage of up to 10x, while the remaining six assets will support up to 3x. The service will be provided by Robinhood Derivatives, which is registered with the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission, through the crypto exchange Bitstamp, and Robinhood will leverage the trading infrastructure from its acquisition of Bitstamp, which closed in June 2025. Trading fees are set at 1 basis point per trade, or 0.01%, through the end of 2026. In the US, the CFTC approved the listing of Bitcoin perpetual futures for the first time on May 29, and the move to offer such products under US regulation is spreading.

BitMine Immersion Technologies, chaired by Tom Lee, announced on September 28 that its Ethereum holdings had topped 6 million ETH. Holdings rose by 17,362 ETH from the previous announcement on September 21, reaching 6,001,302 ETH as of September 27. At the time of the announcement, the ETH holdings were worth about 16.1 billion dollars, equivalent to roughly 2.53 trillion yen at 157 yen to the dollar. In addition to ETH, the company holds 213 BTC, cash, listed securities, and strategic investments in companies, and said its total holdings of crypto assets, cash, and other investments reached 17.2 billion dollars. The company launched an ETH-centered treasury strategy on June 30, 2025, with a goal of holding 5 percent of the ETH supply. With ETH supply at about 122.1 million ETH, the company's holdings represent roughly 4.9 percent of that, putting progress toward the 5 percent goal at 98 percent. Of its ETH holdings, 5,067,309 ETH are staked, accounting for about 84 percent of the total. According to Lee, current staking revenue is estimated at about 358 million dollars on an annualized basis, and BitMine's own staking business posted a yield of 2.62 percent annualized over the past seven days. Lee also said a crypto bull market has been underway since late June, noted that institutional investors' allocation to crypto assets remains small, and predicted that institutions will raise their investment ratios through the end of 2026.

BitMine Immersion Technologies has bought more Ethereum, pushing its holdings past the 6 million milestone. Tom Lee, the chairman of the world's largest Ethereum treasury firm, has continued to advocate for Ethereum amid his company's relentless accumulation of the asset. The company trades under the ticker BMNR.

Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, has unveiled an architectural blueprint for Ethereum through 2030, saying the network will no longer be just a blockchain but a hybrid architecture that fuses the blockchain with modern cryptography. Buterin wrote in a post on X that this approach is the foundation for everything planned for Ethereum, starting with the fork after Hegota, an upgrade planned for next year that will likely be Ethereum's last regular fork before everything that follows involves recursive STARKs, formal automated verification, highly optimized consensus algorithms, and making all of it quantum-safe. Glamsterdam, the upgrade preceding Hegota, is expected to ship in the fourth quarter of 2026, after previously being expected to go live in the first half of 2026. Buterin also projected slot times of 4 to 8 seconds by 2030 and absolute finality of 8 to 32 seconds. The price of ETH traded near 2,700 dollars on Sunday, little changed over 24 hours.

The hardware boom in local AI has unexpectedly solved one of Ethereum's main infrastructure problems: the high cost of hardware for end users. Vitalik Buterin confirmed that running Ethereum at home is now easier than ever, crediting the surge in local AI hardware for bringing down the cost barrier that had long kept end users from operating their own nodes. The development marks a shift for the network's infrastructure, as hardware that was once prohibitively expensive for individuals is now more accessible thanks to demand driven by local AI. Buterin's confirmation underscores how the AI boom is delivering an unintended benefit to Ethereum's decentralization goals.