Bitcoin Dips as Strong US Jobs Report Signals More Fed Rate Hikes

Historically, October has been a month of positive price movements for Bitcoin (BTC), even leading to a popular “Uptober” meme.

However, as the first full week of the month comes to an end, BTC has dropped from $20,146 to as low as $19,550 on Friday, marking a 3% loss over the past day. Since then, the leading cryptocurrency has recovered some and is now changing hands at $19,648, according to CoinGecko.

Several major coins, including Solana (SOL), Dogecoin (DOGE), Avalanche (AVAX), and Litecoin (LTC) posted losses between 3% and 4% as well, as the market capitalization of the entire crypto market fell below the $1 trillion mark.

BTC

+6.43%$93,591.03

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Among the ten largest cryptocurrencies, the least affected are XRP and Cardano (ADA), which are down 0.6% and 0.8%, respectively.

Ethereum (ETH), the second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, is down 1.2% over the day, trading at $1,331, per CoinGecko.

ETH

-14.84%$1,760.41

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'Nail in the coffin' for more rate hikes

The fresh reversal comes on the heels of the U.S. Labor Department's September job report, which showed the American economy added another 263,000 new jobs, with the unemployment rate ticking down 0.2 percentage points to 3.5%.

Though job growth slowed compared to the 315,000 increase in August, showing the lowest monthly increase since April 2021, the U.S. economy is still strong.

This strength likely increases the odds of more aggressive monetary policy tightening ahead of the Fed’s next meeting in November.

Bitcoin Dips as Fed Again Raises Interest Rates to Combat Inflation

The price of Bitcoin dropped sharply following the Federal Reserve’s announcement that it would hike interest rates by 75 basis points to combat sky-high inflation.  The biggest cryptocurrency by market cap dropped below $19,000 following the announcement before rebounding amid widespread market volatility. It’s now trading at roughly $19,039, down around 1% over the last hour. Bitcoin is also down approximately 5.7% in the past seven days.  Market analysts had expected the Fed to raise interest...

U.S. Treasury yields jumped following the data release, as opposed to stocks that opened lower on Friday.

“This puts the nail in the coffin for another 75 [basis point rate increase] in November,” Jeffrey Roach, chief economist at LPL Financial, told CNBC.