Bitcoin (BTC) Holds Near $80K After Blowout 162,000 August Jobs Report

162,000 Jobs Reset September Odds

Bitcoin (BTC) held near the $80,000 line on Thursday while a blowout US August employment report forced traders to reprice the Federal Reserve's September meeting. Nonfarm payrolls expanded by 162,000, far above the 53,000 consensus compiled by Dow Jones and the 56,000 estimate in the Reuters survey. The unemployment rate held at 4.1%, exactly as forecast. Average hourly earnings rose 3.1% year over year, slowing from 3.2% in July and marking the softest wage pace since June 2021.

The reaction ran through rates and the dollar first. The policy-sensitive 2-year Treasury yield climbed more than 4 basis points to around 4.377%, its highest level since January of last year, while the 10-year yield added 1.2 basis points to 4.784%, edging back toward 4.8%. The dollar index briefly cleared 99.00 after the print before surrendering most of the spike, closing at 98.855, up 0.14%. The dollar also firmed 0.26% against the yen at 156.19, and the euro slipped 0.12% to 1.1611.

CME FedWatch placed the probability of a 25-basis-point hike at the September 15-16 FOMC at roughly 58%, about nine points higher than a day earlier. Gold, which pays no yield and competes directly with cash for defensive flows, bore the sharpest damage: spot bullion dropped as much as 2% intraday to near $4,365 before recovering to close at $4,430.52, down 0.94%, while December futures settled 1.4% lower at $4,476.60.

Crypto absorbed the shock with notable composure. Bitcoin traded around $79,694 at the time of writing, keeping its footing near the $80K level, and Ethereum (ETH) changed hands at $2,452.83. Our read of venue order flow suggests market-maker inventories absorbed the rate repricing without forced deleveraging, a sign positioning was not stretched going into the print. Analysts cautioned that a single payroll release rarely settles the policy path, pointing to the slowing wage pace as evidence inflation pressure may still be cooling.

Trump Threatens Trade Halt Over Rates

President Donald Trump escalated his public campaign against the Fed on Thursday, warning that the United States will halt trade with countries it runs deficits with unless the central bank cuts interest rates. In a Truth Social post issued shortly after the jobs data, Trump welcomed the strong employment figures, argued that America's strengthened credit justifies the lowest rates in the world, and then reached for an extreme lever: if rates are not lowered, the US will stop trading with the countries it loses money to. He asserted that the Supreme Court had strongly recognized the president's absolute power in its tariff ruling and framed such a move as better than tariffs.

The post named no countries, but Trump filled in the arithmetic later at the White House, claiming the US would save $90 billion by ending trade with Canada, loses $200 billion a year to the European Union and loses $195 billion annually to Mexico. Some countries borrow at 0.5%, he told reporters, while US rates sit at 4% and should be at 1% or 0.5%.

The threat landed ten days before the September 15-16 FOMC and hours after the payrolls beat pushed FedWatch hike odds to 58.2%, up roughly ten points in a day. The posture marks a resumption of pressure on Fed Chair Kevin Warsh after a period of relative restraint, and analysts characterized a literal embargo on deficit partners as extreme, with retaliation and consumer price increases the likely cost to the US itself. Whether the trade card is executable policy or maximalist negotiating leverage ahead of the meeting remains unclear.

For crypto, the standoff cuts both ways: a White House demanding cheaper money is nominally supportive of scarce assets — Bitcoin's circulating supply is capped at 21 million — though past cycles show sweeping policy shocks can stress everything from exchange liquidity to algorithmic stablecoins. Readers tracking the market in real time can follow live spot and futures prices on Binance.

CPI Is the Last Word Before the FOMC

The throughline across both sessions is that labor strength has raised the bar for Fed easing just as the White House raises the political cost of tightening. COINOTAG's aggregate market data keeps sentiment constructive — the Fear & Greed Index reads 74/100 (Greed), with Bitcoin at 68.9% of our tracked $2.32 trillion market cap. Next week's CPI decides whether that holds.