Bitcoin Price Briefly Dips Below $79K as Jobs Report Cuts Fed Bets

• August payrolls rose 162,000, with unemployment steady at 4.1%.
• Fed odds shifted to roughly 60% for a hike to 375–400 bps.
• Bitcoin dipped below $79,000 as $758.15M was liquidated in 24 hours.
• CryptoQuant data shows whales aren’t selling despite the drop.
• August CPI lands September 11, seen printing around 0.2–0.3%.
  

Bitcoin briefly traded below $79,000 on Friday after the August jobs report came in stronger than economists had expected, cutting into bets that the Federal Reserve would keep easing at the pace markets had priced through the summer. The wider crypto market fell alongside it, though the selloff didn’t hold, and BTC recovered part of the drop within hours.

The U.S. economy added 162,000 jobs in August, more than five times the roughly 31,000 monthly average of the prior twelve months. The unemployment rate held at 4.1%, and average hourly earnings rose 0.3% on the month to $37.75, keeping annual wage growth at 3.1%. Revisions to June and July added another 55,000 jobs on top of what had already been reported, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Where the jobs actually came from

Food services and drinking places added 59,000 positions, nearly five times the sector’s trailing twelve-month average. Local government education added 42,000, largely reversing a weak July. Manufacturing extended its slow climb out of a December 2025 trough, up 16,000 and now 58,000 jobs above that low, led by machinery and fabricated metal producers.

Information employment was the outlier, losing 23,000 jobs as computing infrastructure, publishing, and broadcasting all contracted. That’s consistent with a slowdown in tech hiring that’s shown up in the data on and off since early 2026. Everywhere else, the picture was firmer than the Fed likely wanted to see two weeks before a meeting where markets had been pricing meaningful odds of further easing.

Rate odds move, and CPI is next up

With the current Fed target rate at 350–375 basis points, futures markets now assign roughly 60% odds to a move into the 375–400 range at the next meeting and about 40% to the rate holding where it is, a shift from a split that had leaned the other way a week earlier.

The next test comes fast. August CPI is due out September 11, and prediction markets on Kalshi are pricing the outcome tightly: roughly 72% odds that monthly headline CPI comes in above 0.1%, but only about 34% odds it clears 0.4%, which puts the implied consensus somewhere around a 0.2–0.3% monthly print. That’s a firmer number than the Fed would need to justify cutting on schedule, and it lines up with the same stagflation-adjacent concern that’s been showing up in rate-market commentary since the spring, namely that a resilient labor market paired with sticky prices leaves the Fed with less room to move than a soft-landing narrative implies. If CPI comes in at or above that range, the rate odds now sitting near 60/40 could tilt further away from cuts before the meeting even happens.

$758 million liquidated, split almost evenly by direction

The repricing triggered one of the larger liquidation events of the past month. Roughly $758.15 million in leveraged positions were force-closed across exchanges in 24 hours, split between $294.30 million in longs and $463.84 million in shorts, according to data from CoinGlass. Nearly 61% of the total came from short positions, which is the more telling number here: a meaningful share of traders had positioned for a deeper break than the market delivered, and once BTC found buyers near $79,000, those shorts got squeezed on the way back up.

Zcash stood out relative to its size, with almost $39 million liquidated despite a market cap that puts it well behind XRP or Solana, pointing to concentrated leveraged positioning in the token rather than broad participation. XRP’s liquidations came with a positive net flow on the day, another sign shorts absorbed most of the damage there.

What on-chain data says whales are doing

Away from the leverage-driven noise, on-chain metrics tracked by CryptoQuant point to a calmer picture among large holders. Bitcoin’s exchange whale ratio, which measures how much of total exchange inflow comes from large wallets, fell to 0.39, down nearly 12% and near its lowest level of the year, indicating whales aren’t moving large sums onto exchanges to sell. The spent output profit ratio sat at 1.00, meaning coins are moving on-chain at roughly breakeven rather than at a steep profit, and net unrealized profit and loss held at a moderate 0.31, well below the euphoric readings typically seen near cycle tops.

Whales Still Consider Bitcoin Too Cheap to Take Profits

“Declining selling pressure a still moderate NUPL level and a falling Whale Ratio are supportive for BTC's price.” – By @PelinayPA pic.twitter.com/dFt1Ezo85k

— CryptoQuant.com (@cryptoquant_com) September 4, 2026

Taken together, analyst Pelinay described the combination as declining selling pressure, a still-moderate NUPL level, and a falling whale ratio, all of which read as supportive for price rather than warning signs. It’s a useful counterweight to the liquidation headline: the leveraged, short-term end of the market got shaken out hard on Friday, but the holders with the largest balances weren’t the ones doing the selling.

Where this sits in the bigger cycle

Friday’s dip also comes on the heels of a strong run. Bitcoin, Ethereum, and a number of altcoins posted their largest green month since late 2025 in August. Some investors are watching whether the current cycle’s bear phase, if one is underway, bottoms sometime in 2026, a timeline drawn from the four-year Bitcoin cycle thesis that ties price troughs to the halving schedule –Fidelity’s Jurrien Timmer has pointed to a $65,000–$75,000 support zone under that framework, while other analysts tie the cycle low more specifically to the midterm election calendar. Timmer’s own note is careful to add that a bounce doesn’t confirm the bear market has ended, which is a fair way to frame Friday’s action too.

While I remain a secular bull on Bitcoin, my concern is that Bitcoin may well have ended another 4-year cycle halving phase, both in price and time. If we visually line up all the bull markets (green) we can see that the October high of $125k after 145 months of rallying fits… pic.twitter.com/Uxg9DTccnt

— Jurrien Timmer (@TimmerFidelity) December 18, 2025

The more immediate catalyst is CPI on September 11, followed by the Fed’s next decision. Between now and then, the market has three inputs to reconcile: a labor report that argued for fewer cuts, on-chain data that shows whales holding rather than distributing, and a cycle framework that some traders are using to time a bottom that may or may not arrive on schedule. None of those three necessarily agree with each other, which is part of why Friday’s price action moved as fast as it did in both directions.