Bitcoin gave back the core of Thursday’s Waller-driven rally in five minutes Friday after the US jobs report rebuilt the case for another Federal Reserve rate increase this month.
BTC traded at $81,340 immediately before the August payrolls release and dropped to $79,661 inside a single five-minute candle, a decline of about 1.8%. The move pushed Bitcoin back through $80,000 almost as quickly as it had reclaimed the level a day earlier.
At the latest check Friday, Bitcoin remained around $79,700, leaving the market below the psychological level that Thursday’s rally had restored.
The reversal matters because the catalyst was exactly the opposite of the one that lifted BTC on September 3.
FinanceFeeds wrote Thursday that Bitcoin surged past $80,000 after a dovish signal from Fed Governor Christopher Waller cut September hike odds back toward a coin flip. One labor-market report has now tested that trade from the other direction.
Payrolls Came In at 162,000
The Bureau of Labor Statistics said nonfarm payroll employment increased by 162,000 in August, while the unemployment rate remained unchanged at 4.1%.
The headline was stronger than markets had expected, but the revisions strengthened it further.
June payroll growth was revised to 31,000 from 20,000, while July was revised to a gain of 21,000 from the previously reported decline of 23,000. Together, the two months were revised upward by 55,000 jobs.
Average hourly earnings rose 0.3% during August to $37.75 and were 3.1% higher than a year earlier.
That wage number matters differently from the payroll headline. Strong employment speaks to economic resilience. Wage growth speaks more directly to whether domestic price pressure could remain persistent enough to keep the Fed uncomfortable with inflation.
September Hike Odds Moved Back Above 50%
Interest-rate pricing reacted with Bitcoin.
A CME FedWatch snapshot cited by Briefing.com shortly after the release put the probability of a 25-basis-point increase at the September 16 meeting at 58.2%, up from 49.4% the previous day.
The repricing did not stop there.
Later Friday, short-term interest-rate futures were implying roughly a 65% probability of a September hike, compared with about 55% immediately before the jobs report.
The exact probability therefore depends on the timestamp, but the direction is clear: the market moved from Thursday’s near-even contest back toward a hike after payrolls.
That is the mirror image of what happened after Waller said he could support leaving rates unchanged if inflation continued to moderate.
Bitcoin’s $80,000 Break Has Been Reversed, Not Settled
Friday’s selloff does not settle the September Fed decision.
The labor report itself was less uniformly strong beneath the headline. Food services and drinking places added 59,000 jobs and local government education added 42,000, meaning those two areas accounted for more than 100,000 of the 162,000 headline increase.
Information employment, meanwhile, fell by 23,000.
The next major test comes on September 11 with August CPI, five days before the Fed decision.
For Bitcoin, that leaves $80,000 as something more useful than a round number. Thursday showed how quickly BTC can move above it when hike expectations fall. Friday showed how quickly that move can disappear when those expectations rebuild.
The Waller rally was not merely trimmed. Its rates thesis was reversed in one data release.