Bitcoin (BTC) briefly bounced from $66,000 to above $68,000 but slightly reversed those gains following Wednesday’s US January jobs report. The top crypto is hovering around $67,000, down 2% over the past 24 hours as of writing on Wednesday.
The broader crypto market is showing mixed performance, with major altcoins Ethereum (ETH), XRP, and Solana (SOL) trending lower alongside Bitcoin. However, a few privacy-based and DeFi tokens, including Monero (XMR), Zcash (ZEC), Uniswap (UNI) and Aster (ASTER), are outliers, posting gains ranging from 4-8%.
Strong labour market weakens rate cut expectations
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the US Nonfarm Payrolls (NFP) showed that the economy added 130K jobs in January, nearly double analysts’ expectations of 70K. The unemployment rate dropped from 4.4% to 4.3% on a yearly basis, below forecasts of 4.4%.
The January figure comes alongside a downward revision of 862,000 jobs in 2025, meaning the US labour market largely stalled last year.
Expectations of a rate cut in the next Federal Reserve (Fed) meeting slated for March 18 declined from 20% on Tuesday to about 8% at the time of publication, according to the CME FedWatch tool.
Sentiment sank further following hawkish comments from Kansas City Fed President Jeffrey Schmid, who highlighted that inflation may persist if the central bank opts for a rate reduction in the current economic conditions.
The crypto market has historically underperformed during restrictive policy environments in the US, as evidenced by Bitcoin’s further decline after the Fed held rates at its January meeting, alongside President Trump’s nomination of Kevin Warsh to lead the central bank.
On Wednesday, the underlying crypto market structure remains bearish with flashes of negative funding rates across several top cryptos, per Coinglass data.
The Bitcoin Coinbase Premium Index, which tracks US investors’ sentiment, continues to trade at a discount, hovering around -0.07% on Wednesday amid mild net inflows of $166.5 million into US spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in the past day.