Bitcoin ran toward $82,000 this morning. Then payrolls hit. The economy added 162,000 jobs in August against a consensus estimate of 56,000, unemployment held at 4.1%, prior months were revised up by 55,000 jobs, and bitcoin fell back below $80,000 within minutes. A stronger labor market should be good news. In our system, it immediately became bad news because traders decided it gave the Fed more room to raise the price of money.
That is how backwards fiat markets have become. Employment rises, so bond yields rise. Bond yields rise, so the cost of capital rises. Risk assets sell off because a small committee may decide that ordinary people having jobs is evidence that money is still too cheap. Every business, mortgage, pension, and asset valuation is forced to react to an administered interest rate.
No group of people can know the correct price of money for an economy this large and complex. The market should discover that price. Instead, we wait for government surveys and parse Fed speeches like medieval priests reading animal entrails. Bitcoin was built as the escape hatch from exactly this kind of monetary manipulation.