US Jobs Data Negative, Bitcoin and Cryptocurrencies Decline Across the Board

JAKARTA, KOMPAS.com - Prices of a number of crypto assets weakened amid the release of United States employment data, the Non-Farm Payrolls (NFP). The US economy shed jobs in February 2026, as extreme winter weather and a strike at one of the country’s largest healthcare providers weighed on employment. Citing CNBC, Saturday (7 March 2026), the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported that nonfarm payrolls, the number of workers outside the agricultural sector, fell by 92,000 in February 2026. The decline was also smaller than January’s revised drop of 126,000. February 2026 marked the third time in five months that payrolls fell, after a sharp revision showed a 17,000-job drop in December 2025. At the same time, the unemployment rate rose to 4.4 percent. Meanwhile, in the last 24 hours, prices of major crypto assets also slumped. Based on CoinMarketCap data on Saturday (7 March 2026), Bitcoin (BTC) fell about 3.62% to around $68,029, Ethereum (ETH) fell 3.53% to $1,990.31, Binance Coin (BNB) corrected 1.71% to $628.38. A similar pressure hit XRP, which weakened about 2.14% to $1.372. Cardano (ADA) also faced downside pressure with a 3.09% correction to $0.2591, while Bitcoin Cash (BCH) declined 1.50% to $449.69. Also, TRON (TRX) posted a modest decline of about 1.01% to $0.2838. Calvin Kizana, CEO of Tokocrypto, said BTC and other cryptocurrencies tend to weaken ahead of the NFP release as market participants are highly sensitive to the direction of US interest rate policy. “Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies tend to weaken ahead of the Non-Farm Payrolls release as the market is once again highly sensitive to the direction of US interest rates,” he said when contacted by Kompas.com on Sunday afternoon. In recent days, Bitcoin traded in a range of around $70,000–$71,000 and had fallen by roughly 2–3%. He said the decline occurred as the market faced uncertainty about when the Fed would begin cutting rates.