Bitcoin slides on NFP data

The crypto market settled in the red territory on Friday, with Bitcoin heading the downtrend of the $20,000 mark again as analysts eye further rate hikes in light of the strong NFP data.

October is usually a positive season for Bitcoin’s price movements, however, as the first full week of the month comes to an end, Bitcoin has dropped from $20,146 to as low as $19,550 on Friday, marking a 3% loss over the past day. At the time of writing, Bitcoin is trading at $19402.

Several major coins, including Solana, Dogecoin, Avalanche, and Litecoin posted losses between 3% and 4% as well, as the market capitalization of the entire crypto market fell below the $1 trillion mark.

Among the ten largest cryptocurrencies, the least affected are XRP and Cardano, which are down 0.6% and 0.8%, respectively. Ethereum, the second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, is down 1.2% over the day, trading at $1,331.

The fresh reversal comes after the US NFP data denoting that the American economy added another 263,000 new jobs, with the unemployment rate ticking down 0.2 percentage points to 3.5%. Though job growth slowed compared to the 315,000 increase in August, showing the lowest monthly increase since April 2021, the U.S. economy is still strong.

This strength likely increases the odds of more aggressive monetary policy tightening ahead of the Fed’s next meeting in November.