Bitcoin holds steady despite the stronger-than-expected U.S. employment report. It rose to around $67,800 during the day, an interesting signal considering that the market usually reacts poorly to news that moves back Fed rate cuts. In January, the USA added 130,000 jobs, nearly double the 70,000 expected, shifting expectations for rate cuts to July.

What’s curious is that the data hides more than it shows. Employment growth is concentrated almost entirely in the healthcare sector, while the rest of the economy remains fairly stagnant. Despite this, the losses after the report weren’t as catastrophic as one might expect. The Fear and Greed index crashed to 5, the lowest level since the FTX crisis in 2022, yet the sellers seem exhausted.

In derivatives, bearish momentum is stabilizing. Open interest remains steady at around $15.8 billion, and funding rates have returned to neutral. But defensive caution is intensifying: in options markets, puts account for 54% of volume over the last 24 hours, as traders pay a panic premium for downside protection. Total liquidations were $342 million, with losses after the report distributed between longs and shorts in a relatively balanced way.

By the way, BlackRock made an interesting move: it’s bringing its $2.2 billion tokenized U.S. Treasury fund from 2,2 miliardi di dollari on Uniswap. It’s the first time the world’s largest asset manager has tokenized a product and listed it on a decentralized exchange. It has also acquired a stake in UNI, the governance token. UNI rose 25% on the news, reaching $4.11, and then fell back to $3.35. That’s not small, considering that large institutions usually don’t invest directly in governance tokens of DeFi protocols.