TL;DR

• New data that showed payrolls were lowering while unemployment was increasing at a much faster rate than expected triggered recession fears, wiping billions from the crypto market in a week.

Full Story

Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana all shed insane amounts of value last week.

Why? Bear with us as we cook for a second…

Imagine if an aircraft had a five minute delay on any steering adjustments made by the pilot…

(It’d make flying Spirit, or any Boeing airplane, that much scarier).

Weirdly enough — that’s kind of how the Federal Reserve pilots the US economy with interest rate adjustments.

Every time they tweak interest rates, it takes — wait for it…

Eighteen whole months for the effects to show in the economy.

Which means when economic data starts flashing warning signals, it’s often too late, and the Fed can’t adjust quickly enough to stem any bleeds.

Over the past year or so, the Fed has been trying to thread a needle that looks like this:

Weaken the economy enough so that we don’t enter hyperinflation…while also avoiding a recession (aka: pull off a ‘soft landing’).

Which is kinda like trying to fillet a fish with a hammer.

About a month back, we started to see signs that the economy was weakening, though only mildly — which is good if we want a soft landing.

…but over the past week, we saw signs that this economic weakening is accelerating, with data that showed payrolls were lowering while unemployment was increasing at a much faster rate than expected.

With that fear came a grueling market sell off.

BTC dumped from ~$70k to ~$57.1k, ETH took a dive from ~$3.4k to ~$2.6k, and Solana shed value from ~$193 down to ~$130.

Alright, now you know.