Bitcoin rose a little on Friday, but largely shrugged off an unexpectedly strong jobs report, along with a week’s worth of upset and uproar over the U.S. debt ceiling, end-game negotiations and renewed inflation concerns.
The largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization was recently trading at about $27,180, up 1.2%. BTC edged above $27,000 shortly before U.S. equity markets opened on Friday after spending much of the previous two days well below this threshold, a result largely of the sort of inflationary angst that has hobbled prices over the past 18 months.
“Bitcoin is holding steady after a busy week filled with a debt limit deal, a complicated jobs report that showed both robust hiring and surging layoffs, and as lawmakers inch towards figuring out how to regulate crypto,” Edward Moya, senior market analyst at foreign exchange market maker Oanda, wrote in an email, flagging recent discussion of a Securities Clarity Act that could clarify “if some tokens are unregistered securities.”
Ether was recently changing hands just over $1,905, up nearly 2% from Thursday, same time. The second largest crypto had spent much of the past seven days below this level as ETH investors also wrestled with macroeconomic headwinds.
Almost without exception, other major cryptos spent the day solidly in positive territory with ADA and SOL, the tokens of the Cardano and Solana smart contract platforms, recently rising more than 4% and 3.5%, respectively. Meanwhile, a bevy of small DeFi focused protocols were the big gainers of the past seven days, according to the CoinDesk Market Index, a measure of crypto markets overall performance, with Lido (LDO), Synapse (SYN), and PancakeSwap (CAKE), climbing 15%, 13%, and 12%, respectively. The CMI was recently up 1.6%.
Stocks jumped following the robust U.S. Labor Department report that showed the economy adding 339,000 jobs in May, about 75% more than economists forecast and also markedly higher than the 294,000 jobs added in April. The hot jobs data offered the latest evidence that the employment market remained tight, a sign that the economy isn’t done expanding and that inflation therefore will remain a concern. Yet a May unemployment rate of 3.7%, higher than the anticipated 3.5%, offered a more hopeful sign that the U.S. central bank may use to justify a halt to its steady diet of interest rate hikes. Rate increases have bedeviled crypto markets.
The tech-focused Nasdaq Composite and S&P 500, which has a strong technology component, spiked 1.4% and 1%, respectively. Safe-haven gold, which neared a record high less than a month ago, dropped 1.5% to trade at $1,965.
Oanda’s Moya said that the U.S. central banks suggested that the U.S. central bank faces a difficult decision on a June interest rate increase after indicating it was open to a stoppage and might be influenced by the upcoming Institute for Supply Management (ISM) and May Consumer Price Index releases.
“The Fed has almost locked themselves into a corner with a skip for the June meeting, but it should be very clear that they are not done raising rates,” Moya wrote, also noting that “that at the midpoint of the year, “this economy is not showing strong signs that the second half of the year recession is coming.”