Bitcoin fails to beat $23.4K sellers as US payrolls upend inflation debate

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Bitcoin (BTC) saw fresh rejection at $23,500 resistance on Aug. 5 as United States equities failed to embrace surprisingly strong payroll data.

BTC/USD 1-hour candle chart (Bitstamp). Source: TradingView

“Collapsing real wages” poke fun at payroll print

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView followed BTC/USD as bears kept the market in its intraday trading range.

Wall Street opened with a whimper despite U.S. payrolls for July coming in at twice estimated levels. The curious reaction had some analysts arguing that the numbers did not in fact show economic strength, but rather existing workers taking on second jobs due to inflation.

“The gain of 528K jobs in July as the labor force participation rate fell to 62.1, means that most of the new jobs went to people who already had jobs,” gold bug Peter Schiff responded.

“Collapsing real wages force many workers to moonlight to pay the bills. If the labor market were strong one job would be enough.”

Schiff was far from alone in his suspicions about the state of employment, with Wealthion CEO Adam Taggart among others voicing distrust.

Kyle Bass, chief investment officer at Hayman Capital Management, meanwhile recalled the Federal Reserve’s optimism on employment in the years prior to the 2008 Global Financial Crisis.

The S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite Index thus both opened mildly down on the day before a relief rally entered, while Bitcoin recovered from a dip below $23,000 to retarget range highs at the time of writing.

“Short corrections are possible, but trend is still up. Looking quite fine on the higher timeframes for Bitcoin,” Cointelegraph contributor Michaël van de Poppe added.

Nonetheless, data from the Binance order book had some concerned about whale activity. Notably, one entity was likely attempting to exit its position altogether at current levels, Maartunn, a contributor to on-chain analytics platform CryptoQuant warned.

“Historically, the purple class of whales has had the most influence over Bitcoin price,” monitoring resource Material Indicators, which provided the figures, added.

Too many rejections?

Bitcoin traders meanwhile weighed the possibility of a fresh leg down in the midst of repeated rejections at $24,500.

Related: ‘Insane evidence’ Bitcoin has capitulated in past 2 months — analysis

Popular trading account Profit Blue eyed $20,000 as the next major level of interest should the downtrend play out.

“$BTC Took out the lows and resting liquidity that was build up below $22.6K,” fellow trader Daan continued.

“Nearest downside liquidity is now sitting all the way at the high volume node below $21K. The upside however has these levels much closer sitting at $23.6K–$24.7K. Seems favorable direction to me.”

Daan also noted that crypto was “underperforming the rest of the markets this week” but that this could already be changing.

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