Bad news has just been bad news over the past 24 hours. Friday’s weak U.S. jobs report bolstered bets on deeper Fed cuts, but bitcoin BTC$110,542.77 hasn’t played along.

The leading cryptocurrency by market value remains heavy below $112,000, instead of rallying on the prospect of easier monetary policy as many had anticipated. The inability to find upside suggests potential for a deeper sell-off ahead.

NFP shock

Job seekers had a tough time in August as the nonfarm payrolls revealed just 22,000 job additions, significantly less than the Dow Jones’ projection of 75,000. The report also revised lower the combined job creation over June and July by 21,000. Notably, the revised June figure showed a net loss of 13,000.

Nine sectors, including manufacturing, construction, wholesale trade, and professional services, registered job losses, while health services and leisure and hospitality were bright spots.

The Kobeissi Letter called the jobs report “absolutely insane.” The newsletter service described the downward revisions in prior months as a sign of a broken system and the labour market entering recession territory.

Following the jobs data, the probability of a Fed rate cut at the Sept. 17 meeting surged to 100%, and the odds of a 50-basis-point cut jumped to 12%. The likelihood of additional rate cuts in November and December also increased, sending Treasury yields lower.

The upcoming revisions to earlier jobs reports are expected to add fuel to the rate cut bets. “The BLS will announce annual benchmark revisions on Tuesday, and they are expected to point to even weaker job growth earlier. Some surveys suggest between 500k and 1 mln jobs could be revised away,” Bannockburn Global Forex’s Managing Director and Chief Market Strategist, Marc Chandler said in a market update.

BTC’s double top is intact; volatility in Treasury yields may rise

Bitcoin briefly rallied on hopes of a Fed rate cut and softer yields, reaching a high of over $113,300. But the bounce quickly faded, with prices slipping back under $111,982 — the double‑top neckline.

Failing to retake that level underscored the late August double top breakdown and validates the bearish setup, keeping downside risks in focus. Prices crossing below the Ichimoku cloud further validates the bearish outlook, as Brent Donnelly, president of Spectra Markets, noted in a market update.

The first line of support is located around $101,700, which corresponds to the 200-day simple moving average (SMA). The latest double top breakdown in bitcoin closely mirrors the one from February this year, which led to a significant multi-week sell-off that pushed prices down to around $75,000.

The double top is a bearish reversal chart formation that occurs after an asset has experienced an uptrend. It forms when the price reaches a high point (the first peak), then pulls back to a support level called the neckline. The price then rises again but fails to surpass the first peak, creating a second peak at roughly the same level. The pattern is confirmed when the price breaks below the neckline, signaling that the previous uptrend has lost momentum and a downtrend may follow.

Treasury yields may turn volatile

The bearish technical outlook, presented by the latest double top breakdown, is reinforced by the possibility of a pickup in volatility in Treasury yields, which often leads to financial tightening.

The volatility could pick up in the coming days, as the impending Fed rate cuts could initially send the 10-year yield lower in a positive development for BTC and risk assets. That said, the downside looks limited and could be quickly reversed, much like what happened in late 2024.

Last year, from September through December, the 10-year yield actually rose, even as the Fed began cutting rates, reversing earlier declines that had occurred in the lead-up to September. The 10-year yield bottomed out at 3.6% in mid-September 2024 and then rose to 4.80% by mid-January.

While the labour market today appears significantly weaker than last year, inflation is relatively higher, and fiscal spending continues unabated, both of which mean that the yield could surge following the September rate cut.

“Why the 10yr yield rose from September through December 2024 is open to interpretation, but there was an underpinning of macro resilience, sticky-ish inflation and lots of talk on fiscal largesse as a medium-term risk. This time around, granted, worries on the economy are more intense. But offsetting this are ongoing fiscal concerns, and quite a different inflation dynamic,” analysts at ING said in a note to clients.

August CPI data due next week

When the Fed cut rates last September, the U.S. consumer price index was well below 3%. Since then, it has edged back up to 3%. More importantly, the August CPI data, due next week, is likely to provide further evidence of inflation stickiness.

According to Wells Fargo, the core CPI is likely to have risen by 0.3%, keeping the year-over-year rate at 3.1%. Meanwhile, the headline CPI is forecast to have risen 0.3% month-over-month and 2.9% year-over-year.

Key takeaways:

• Bitcoin miners sold $485 million worth of BTC during a 12-day period ending Aug. 23.

• Despite miners selling, Bitcoin’s network hashrate and fundamentals remain resilient.

Bitcoin (BTC) reclaimed the $112,000 mark on Thursday, recovering from a six-week low hit just two days prior. Despite the bounce, traders remain uneasy as Bitcoin miners have been offloading coins at the fastest pace in nine months. The question is whether this signals the start of deeper trouble or if other factors are driving the recent outflows.

Miner wallets tracked by Glassnode show steady reductions between Aug. 11 and Aug. 23, with little sign of renewed accumulation since then. The last stretch of consistent withdrawals exceeding 500 BTC per day was back on Dec. 28, 2024, after Bitcoin repeatedly failed to hold above $97,000.

In the latest sell-off, miners unloaded 4,207 BTC, worth roughly $485 million, during the 12-day period ending Aug. 23. That compares with a previous accumulation phase between April and July, when miners added 6,675 BTC to their reserves. Miner balances now stand at 63,736 BTC, valued at more than $7.1 billion.

While these flows are relatively small compared with allocations from companies like MicroStrategy (MSTR) and Metaplanet (MTPLF), they tend to fuel market speculation and FUD. If miners are facing tighter cash flow, selling pressures could escalate unless profitability improves.

Over the past nine months, Bitcoin has gained 18%, but miner profitability has dropped by 10%, according to HashRateIndex data. Rising mining difficulty and weaker demand for onchain transactions have weighed on margins. The Bitcoin network continues to self-adjust to support an average block interval of 10 minutes, but profitability remains a concern.

The Bitcoin hashprice index currently stands at 54 PH/second, down from 59 PH/second a month ago. Even so, miners hardly have grounds to complain: the indicator has improved dramatically from levels seen back in March. According to NiceHash data, even Bitmain’s S19 XP rigs from late 2022 remain profitable at $0.09 per kWh.

Bitcoin miners face AI competition but remain resilient

Some investor disappointment stems from a growing shift toward artificial intelligence infrastructure. This narrative gained traction after TeraWulf (WULF) struck a $3.2 billion deal with Google in exchange for a 14% equity stake. The funds will be used to expand TeraWulf’s AI data center campus in New York, slated to launch operations in the second half of 2026.

Related: Bitcoin to hit $1.3M by 2035 as institutions drive demand–Bitwise

Other miners are following a similar pivot. Australian firm Iren, formerly known as Iris Energy, has accelerated the acquisition of Nvidia GPUs and is building a liquid-cooled AI data center in Texas, along with a new site in British Columbia that will hold as many as 20,000 GPUs. Meanwhile, Hive, previously Hive Blockchain, has committed $30 million to expand GPU-powered operations in Quebec.

Despite the buzz around AI, Bitcoin’s own fundamentals remain solid. Network hashrate is nearing an all-time high at 960 million TH/second, up 7% in the past three months. That strength counters fears about miners’ net outflows or the lack of profitability gains across the sector.

There’s no evidence that miners are under immediate stress to liquidate positions, and even if selling continues, inflows into corporate reserves are more than capable of countering the effect.

This article is for general information purposes and is not intended to be and should not be taken as legal or investment advice. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed here are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.

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