Bitcoin Holds $77,000 After Weak Hiring Print

ADP reported 38,000 private jobs added in August, down from 44,000 in July, and traders raised the odds of a September Federal Reserve increase anyway. Eighty-four of the 125 largest non-stablecoin tokens fell, gold rose 0.84% and the Nasdaq 100 dropped 1.29%.
By:The Defiant Team•
Markets

<img src="https://xpertsstudio.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/image-33.jpg" alt="Bitcoin Holds $77,000 After Weak Hiring Print” loading=”lazy”>

Bitcoin held above $77,000 through the Asian and European sessions and the first 90 minutes of U.S. trading on Wednesday, after a weaker private hiring report failed to move traders off a September rate increase.

The Fed trade survived the data. Polymarket priced a quarter-point increase at the Sept. 15-16 meeting at 59% after the release, up from 57% on Tuesday, while the 10-year Treasury yield sits at its highest level since January 2025. Crypto followed equities down while gold rose.

Bitcoin last changed hands at $77,038, down 1.0% over 24 hours and 1.7% over seven days, after ranging between $76,298 and $77,930, CoinGecko data shows. Ether was at $2,392.94, down 1.89% and 2.5%, with a $2,357.48 low. XRP fell 2.59% to $1.33 and is 4.4% lower on the week. Solana dropped 2.34% to $99.02 while holding a 2.5% weekly gain, and BNB was flat at $686.17. Total crypto market value was $2.67 trillion, down 1.68% over 24 hours, on $81.75 billion of volume, with bitcoin dominance at 57.9%, according to CoinGecko.

Hiring Slows, Odds Rise

Private employers added 38,000 jobs in August, ADP reported on Wednesday, from the 44,000 the payroll processor recorded for July. Base pay grew 3.2% year over year and gross pay 4.7%.

“Pay can tell us a lot about today’s choppy hiring,” Nela Richardson, chief economist at ADP, said in the release. “To understand hiring patterns, you have to look deeply into where pay growth is accelerating, where it’s slowing, and for whom.”

The print did not shift the rate market toward easing. Polymarket had a quarter-point increase at 59% and no change at 41% on $78.1 million of event volume, against 57% and 40% on $75.6 million a day earlier. A cut of any size trades below 1%.

Traders moved into that position after Chair Kevin Warsh’s Jackson Hole speech on Aug. 28, which The Defiant covered at the time, and the September increase became the favorite over the following sessions. August CPI publishes Sept. 11. August non-farm payrolls follow on Friday.

Yields Take The Lead Again

The 10-year Treasury par yield closed Tuesday at 4.79% and the 30-year at 5.27%, from 4.75% and 5.25% on Monday, Treasury data shows. The 10-year has not closed higher since Jan. 13, 2025, when it also printed 4.79%, according to Treasury’s 2025 series. The 30-year remains below its Aug. 17 close of 5.31%.

Japan’s 10-year government bond yield reached 2.987% on Tuesday and the 30-year 4.131% from 2.943% on Aug. 31

Christopher Tahir, senior market strategist at Exness, wrote in a note sent to reporters that the currency market read the same yields as support for the dollar. “The US dollar was stable on Wednesday amid more hawkish Federal Reserve monetary policy expectations,” he wrote. “As a result, yields remained elevated, with the 10-year Treasury yield reaching its highest level in several years.”

Tahir put the week’s data calendar ahead of the September meeting: “Stronger data could lead to even higher yields and a stronger dollar, while weaker data could prompt traders to reduce their bets on interest rate hikes.”

Equities fell and gold rose. The S&P 500 traded at 7,634.68, down 0.71%, the Nasdaq 100 at 28,905.71, down 1.29%, and the Dow at 52,882.53, down 0.79% Spot gold was at $4,365.11 an ounce, up 0.84%, and Brent crude at $94.13 a barrel, down 0.55%

Bearish To Bullish On BTC

Andreja Cobeljic, head of derivatives trading at AMINA Bank, wrote in commentary sent to reporters that bitcoin’s response to macro shocks is changing, and that the bank’s models turned.

“AMINA’s quantitative signals have moved from bearish to bullish on BTC, while ETH has a capped upside,” he wrote.

Cobeljic set his levels explicitly. “If the price falls below $67,000, I’d reassess. Above it, this recovery is intact,” he wrote. On sentiment, he wrote that “the crowd has gone from euphoric to cautious, but the price hasn’t moved.”

He also argued the debasement trade has the wrong target. “The currencies actually weakening are the euro and the yen, because the US is pulling inward and leaving the periphery currencies exposed,” he wrote. On the Treasury market: “Foreign central banks used to be the largest holders of US Treasuries. Now hedge funds are. The difference between now and then: hedge funds sell when they think yields should be higher. Central banks didn’t.”

Cobeljic wrote that Brent broke above $97 after U.S. strikes on Iranian targets near the Strait of Hormuz on Monday. Brent traded at $94.13 at the time of writing. The Defiant reported on the oil market’s onchain pricing when Pyth launched a 24/7 oil index during the conflict.

Breadth Stays Negative

Forty of the 125 largest non-stablecoin tokens rose, 84 fell and one was unchanged, reversing Tuesday, when 76 of 108 advanced.

The Crypto Fear & Greed Index read 63 on Wednesday, down from 69 on Tuesday and 62 on Monday The index has stayed in greed since Aug. 20

DeFi total value locked stood at $85.31 billion, DefiLlama data shows. Stablecoin supply reached $303.69 billion, up 0.12% over seven days and 1.21% over 30 days, or $370.4 million of net issuance on the week

ETFs Report Partial Again

U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs showed $8.4 million of inflows for Tuesday on Farside Investors, all of it Bitwise’s BITB. BlackRock, Fidelity, Invesco, Valkyrie, VanEck and WisdomTree had not posted figures at the time of writing, so the total is partial. Monday’s session finished at $216.7 million once complete, after $201.9 million of outflows on Aug. 28.

Spot ether ETFs took in $8.6 million on Tuesday, with BlackRock’s ETHB at $11.2 million and Fidelity’s FETH at $4.8 million against $7.4 million of outflows from Grayscale‘s ETHE. Monday’s total was $87.6 million.

Oracles And Credit Lead

Pyth led the day’s gainers with no announcement dated to the move. The oracle’s most recent blog post, dated Sept. 1, records Shein’s Hong Kong listing going live on Pyth Pro from the first tick, the third Asian day-one equity feed in six weeks. PYTH’s market value is about $450 million, and the token is 95.2% below its all-time high.

Maple Finance’s SYRUP rose 13.2% with no post dated to Wednesday on the credit protocol’s insights page, where the most recent entry is the firm’s August memo.

Arbitrum’s ARB added 6.59% to $0.1169 and is 27.4% higher over seven days, the third-largest weekly gain among the 150 biggest tokens, behind Pons and Uniswap. The token rose 25% on Tuesday after fees on Robinhood Chain doubled, taking the Arbitrum DAO’s contractual 10% cut of that revenue to roughly $192,000 a day.

Pons And NEAR Give Back

Pons fell 12.6% and holds a 235.5% seven-day gain, the steepest weekly advance among the largest tokens. The token launched on Robinhood Chain, where Uniswap’s own launchpad out-launched Pons on its first day this week.

NEAR gave back Tuesday’s advance, falling 8.2% to $1.85 after a 7.8% gain the day before, and is 0.8% higher over seven days. No announcement dated to the move appears on the NEAR blog.

ENS fell 11.6% to $5.32 after ranging as high as $6.01. The ENS DAO’s forum carried an ENSIP-28 standards discussion on Wednesday and a Term 7 voting bulletin on Tuesday, with no treasury or token action dated to the drop.

Privacy coins split. Monero rose 2.70% to $517.16 and is 18.2% higher over seven days, the strongest weekly performance among the 20 largest tokens; Zcash fell 4.18% to $813.22 while holding a 5.0% weekly gain. The Defiant tracked the pair’s rally as ZEC cleared $700.

Prices and market data as of 11:10 a.m. ET on Sept. 2, 2026. Token prices, percentage changes and 24-hour ranges from CoinGecko; aggregate market value, volume and dominance from CoinGecko’s global charts; total value locked and stablecoin supply from DefiLlama.

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Source: thedefiant.io