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News · Oct 26, 2026 · 3 min read

Bitcoin today: back under $80,000 before the Fed decision, Brent eases to $114

Bitcoin slipped under $80,000 on Monday morning in Asia, after closing Sunday at $80,772, as traders wait for Wednesday's Fed decision. Brent crude eased from a six-month high, Elon Musk warned of a shakeout among AI data-centre companies, and a coin still costs under a quarter of its price to make.

Firsthand card: "Bitcoin today: back under $80,000 before the Fed decision, Brent eases to $114"

Bitcoin slips under $80,000 again as the week's Fed meeting nears

Bitcoin fell nearly 2% to about $79,800 during Monday's Asian morning, CoinDesk reported, with ether down nearly 3% to just above $2,300. CoinDesk put the level bitcoin has to win back at $82,500, the floor it lost on Thursday, before buyers can treat the dip as a pause.

Our price series closed at $80,772 on Sunday 25 October and read $79,765 on Monday morning. The weekend had already taken it below $80,000: CoinDesk reported on Saturday that bitcoin fell under that line, its weakest in more than a month, after the Wall Street Journal reported that the US was evacuating personnel from embassies and military bases across the Middle East.

Bitcoin closed Sunday at $80,772 and read $79,765 on Monday morning.

Chart: Bitcoin's daily price since 1 September. Monday's reading of $79,765 is the lowest daily reading since 18 September. Open the chart

The Fed decides on Wednesday, and traders are listening for December

The Federal Reserve's rate-setting committee meets on 27 and 28 October, according to the Fed's calendar, and it is not a meeting that comes with new economic projections. CoinDesk said the decision comes on Wednesday, with Chair Kevin Warsh's press conference the focus and traders watching for any hint of a rate rise in December.

Jeff Mei, chief operating officer at the exchange BTSE, told CoinDesk: "we're watching how strongly the chair hints at a December hike." He added that the Fed "could very well adopt an aggressive tone, which means higher rates and less liquidity for crypto and stocks."

The 10-year Treasury yield, on our yields chart, was 4.96% on 22 October, the last reading we hold, down from 5.13% the day before and from 5.21% a week earlier.

Brent eases to about $114 after Trump says it is "decision time" on Iran

Brent crude fell 2% from a six-month high to about $114 a barrel on Monday, CoinDesk reported, after President Donald Trump said it was "getting to be decision time" on Iran. Treasuries rose. South Korea's Kospi fell 1% and the MSCI Asia Pacific Index has now lost four weeks in a row, its longest run since April.

On Friday, Trump had threatened renewed escalation against Iran after the early-November midterms, per CoinDesk's weekend report.

Musk: lenders have shut off funding to AI data-centre companies with no other revenue

SpaceX has raised $40 billion of debt to buy GPUs, the processors that run AI systems, CoinDesk reported. Elon Musk said it could borrow because of its credit rating and steady Starlink and launch revenue, and warned that "debt markets have almost entirely shut off access to money for any company that doesn't have substantial revenue independent of AI data centers". He predicted that more than 200 "neoclouds", the companies that rent out AI computing power, will consolidate into a few survivors.

The article does not mention bitcoin miners. It matters to them because some listed miners have turned power and sites over to AI hosting, and that business now faces a tighter credit market. A bitcoin machine's income comes from the network's block rewards and fees, not from a data-centre lease.

Bitcoin Core tightens its disclosure rules, and Electrum fixes a wallet bug

Bitcoin Core's maintainers merged a change to the project's security policy on Thursday 22 October. Bugs that are easy to rediscover will now be fixed in point releases for every supported version as soon as possible, with a security advisory, instead of waiting under embargo. The author, Chaincode Labs developer Antoine Poinsot, said the rise in easily found reports was "largely due to LLMs". No bug had yet been flagged under the new rule.

Separately, the Electrum wallet released version 4.8.3 on Saturday 24 October, CoinDesk reported, to close a flaw that let a malicious server swap a pending payment for one that sent coins to an attacker. Versions before 4.8.3 remain vulnerable when connected to such servers; users who connect only to trusted servers, their own included, were not exposed. At least one theft is confirmed and the amount has not been disclosed.

Difficulty has not moved since 16 October, and the next step points up

Network difficulty has stood at 140.58 trillion since the adjustment on 16 October, which raised it 5.92%. The next adjustment is 524 blocks away. At the pace blocks have arrived since the last one, our difficulty page estimates it at about +6.1%, a figure that moves with every block until the day.

Difficulty changes only on that schedule, so a weekend of price moves leaves the mining side where it was until then.

What it means for miners

A petahash earned 0.000449 bitcoin on 25 October, $36.27 at that day's close, on our hashprice chart. The weekend moved the price of a coin and left what a machine produces where it was.

On the 8.9 J/TH Antminer S23 XP Hyd, electricity at Nigeria's 3.9¢ makes a bitcoin for about $18,551, 23% of the $79,765 price on Monday morning. That is electricity only, at today's hashprice, and output is not guaranteed. A dip is when an efficient machine on cheap power stacks the most coins for each dollar, and the coins kept are the ones that count.

A coin that costs $18,551 to make is on the market for $79,765.

Chart: Network hashprice, the dollar value of what a petahash earns each day. It has moved within a few dollars through the weekend. Open the chart

Sources and further reading

Disclosure

Firsthand Bitcoin sells and hosts mining hardware, including this machine. No manufacturer, distributor or affiliate programme paid for or reviewed this page and we take no commission on the links above. Historical figures are computed from daily bitcoin price and network hashprice, each day valued at its own prices. Nothing here is investment advice.