AI Tokens Lead Crypto Rebound Amid Strong U.S. Economy
2024-10-05

Alternative cryptocurrencies, or altcoins, lead the digital asset market's charge higher on Friday after geopolitical worries subsided and a blowout U.S. jobs report put recession fears to bed for now.
Artificial intelligence-focused protocol Bittensor's {{TAO}}, Render's {{RNDR}} tokens rallied 14% and 8% over the past 24 hours, while the CoinDesk Computing Index, which tracks several AI-related tokens, was the biggest gainer among crypto sectors.
Notably, asset manager Grayscale upsized the weight of TAO in its decentralized AI-focused crypto fund to 27% from 3% in July, while adding the Graph {{GRT}}, replacing Livepeer (LPT).
Bitcoin steadily climbed during the U.S. trading hours to $62,300, up 2.2% during the day. The broad-market crypto benchmark Coindesk 20 Index rose 4.2% during the same period, underscoring that altcoins outperformed BTC.
Perhaps helping the move was a much stronger-than-anticipated U.S. labor market report, which added 251,000 jobs in September, blowing past estimates for 140,000. The unemployment rate decreased to 4.1%, quieting concerns of an imminent recession.
The positive sentiment rippled through the stock market as well, with the S&P 500 and Nasdaq indexes closing the day 0.9% and 1.2% higher, respecitvely. The U.S. 10-year Treasury bond yield jumped 13 basis points to just shy of 4%, while the U.S. dollar index rose to its strongest level since mid-August. Following the report, investors now overwhelmingly expect a smaller 25 basis point interest cut from the Federal Reserve in November.
"Bitcoin and the longer tail of crypto assets are sensitive to labor market data because it influences the Fed’s decision on rate cuts, which in turn have a positive impact on BTC as borrowing costs fall," Leena ElDeeb, said research analyst at digital asset manager 21Shares. "We expect flows to start recovering following the escalation of geopolitical tensions that shook the market over the past week.”
Bitcoin bottom likely in
Markus Thielen, founder of 10x Research, said that the early October sell-off is likely over, with prices likely to grind higher in the coming weeks. Derivatives markets data suggest that investors aren't looking for hedges against further downside, added, Thielen, while large liquidations cascades as happened earlier this week often marked local price bottoms.
"As long as the U.S. economy stays strong, stocks and crypto should have room to rise," Thielen said.
Will Clemente, founder of Reflexivity Research, said that the Fed easing monetary policy into a strong economy bodes well for bitcoin after this week's leverage flush.
"People puked their positions because they were over-leveraged or fell for the Iran bottle rockets for a second time," Clemente said in an X post. "Now with this morning’s great jobs report, the economy is confirmed strong while we just started a global easing cycle and now we just got a positioning reset."
"Lots of worry, but BTC keeps grinding up," he added in a follow-up post.