The price of Bitcoin, the biggest cryptocurrency in terms of market value, drops to a new intraday low of $16,787 on the Bitstamp platform. It happended after stronger-than-expected data on jobs in the United States was released.
The United States, which has the world’s biggest economy, had an unexpected increase of 263,000 non-farm payroll jobs last month, as the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the United States reported.
The market had anticipated a rise in employment of 200,000 far lower positions. Futures contracts related to the primary indexes that track the performance of the United States stock market also fell significantly, and all risk assets saw significant losses.
The fact that the labor market is showing no signs of slowing down might persuade the Federal Reserve to maintain the same rate of interest rises that it has been doing. In his address earlier this week, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell sent a signal that the central bank was getting set to adopt a more dovish stance, which contributed to a rally in the price of bitcoin and the stock market.
Investors anticipated that the Federal Reserve would end its streak of interest rate rises of 75 basis points with a boost of 50 basis points to the benchmark interest rate in December. On the other hand, the most recent employment report puts even more ambiguity into the picture.
Because the Fed is still under pressure, it may maintain its aggressive attitude or become even more hawkish, hurting owners of risky assets in a dovish reversal that has been highly expected.
Bitcoin successfully recaptured the $17,000 mark earlier this week, just in time for Powell’s highly anticipated speech. Despite this, the bulls have been unable to keep up their bullish momentum.
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