SUI climbed 4.43% on Oct. 5 to trade near $1.23, as Mysten Labs co-founder Adeniyi Abiodun detailed a strategy focused on global payments, stablecoins and transactions initiated by AI agents. CoinGecko data put SUI's market capitalization near $5 billion with roughly $878 million in 24-hour volume, after the token traded between about $1.17 and $1.26 during the session.
Short-term technical levels are dominating the discussion. SUI is testing the upper weekly Bollinger Band near $1.19, while the Relative Strength Index has recovered to 58.71 but remains below overbought territory. Analyst Ali Martinez said an hourly close above $1.27 could confirm another bullish breakout, while Celal Kucuker argued an October bull-flag break could bring $2 into view. Kucuker's longer-term $10 scenario remains conditional on a broader bull market.
The payments narrative is central to Sui's expansion. Sui Foundation has reported more than $1 trillion in stablecoin transfer volume since August 2025, and the network introduced gasless transfers for supported stablecoins including USDsui, USDC, SuiUSDe, AUSD, FDUSD, USDB and USDY. The native USDsui asset launched in March through Bridge, the stablecoin infrastructure company owned by Stripe, and has reached roughly $75 million, according to Abiodun. Recent integrations include Daya using Sui as settlement infrastructure in Nigeria and RedotPay adding support for SUI and native USDC on Sui.
Abiodun also positioned Sui as payment infrastructure rather than simply another Layer 1 blockchain, and said its long-term ambition is to compete with traditional payment rails, including the goal of replacing SWIFT over the next several years. Google listed Mysten Labs among more than 60 collaborators behind the Agent Payments Protocol, or AP2, which is designed to let AI agents initiate payments under verifiable user authorization. Sui's AI stack includes Walrus for storage, Seal for access controls and Nautilus for verifiable computing, while a July programmable-tunnel experiment showed a peak of 6,086,766 transactions per second settling back to Sui mainnet.
Still, DeFi activity remains a challenge. DefiLlama data places Sui's total value locked near $550 million and stablecoin market capitalization near $482 million. Abiodun acknowledged the decline from higher TVL levels while arguing stablecoin adoption and network activity deserve attention. Sui's history also includes the May 2025 Cetus exploit; validators coordinated around frozen funds and later approved a recovery upgrade with 90.9% of stake supporting it, excluding the foundation's own stake.
For now, SUI sits just below the $1.27 resistance area. A sustained hourly close above that level would be the first confirmation for the more bullish scenarios, while a move back below roughly $1.19 could pull price back inside the weekly Bollinger Band.
