The U.S. jobs market continues to exhibit strength with the government reporting the addition of 303,000 jobs last month. That's the strongest headline number since May 2023 and easily topped economist forecasts for 200,000 and February's 270,000 additions (revised from a previously reported 275,000).

The unemployment rate in March dipped to 3.8% against expectations for 3.9% and February's 3.9%.

The price of bitcoin {{BTC}} fell about 0.5% in the minutes following Friday morning's report to $66,000. In traditional markets, U.S. stock index futures gave up a chunk of earlier gains, but are still modestly higher. The 10-year U.S. Treasury yield rose 6.5 basis points to 4.38% and the dollar index added 0.5%.

Coming into 2024, markets had priced in as many as five or six U.S. Federal Reserve rate cuts to begin as soon as March. The economic data, however, hasn't cooperated. Inflation has actually risen somewhat in the first quarter of the year and job growth has remained robust.

March has obviously come and gone with no rate cut and traders ahead of today's numbers had moved expectations of the first rate cut to June or July, according to the CME FedWatch Tool. A total of just three rate cuts are expected for the full year and even that could be too much.

Speaking yesterday, Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari suggested the possibility of no rate cuts at all in 2024. His remarks prompted a sharp reversal in stocks, with the major averages closing down more than 1%. Just following today's numbers, swaps trading indicated expectations for the first rate cut had moved out to September.

Checking other report details, the labor force participation rate rose to 62.7% from 62.5%, suggesting sizable numbers of people returning to the workforce. Average hourly earnings rose 0.3% in March, in line with expectations and up from 0.2% in February. On a year-over-year basis, average hourly earnings rose an in line 4.1%, down from 4.3% in February.

Meme coins led by Solana-based dogwifhat surged, outpacing other niches such as DeFi and exchange tokens.

Bets on DOGE-tracked futures jumped to a record $2 billion, and some trading firms warned of a pullback in recent gains as bitcoin and ether price action showed signs of exhaustion.

Meme coins led by Solana-based dogwifhat (WIF) surged for the second day to lead as a category as the broader market remains little changed ahead of the long weekend in the U.S., Europe and parts of Asia.

Bitcoin {{BTC}} traded around $70,000 million during the Asian morning hours on Friday, showing little change in the past 24 hours. Ether {{ETH}}, Solana’s SOL and Cardano’s ADA slid 1%, while Bitcoin Cash (BCH) added 4% to continue its Thursday rally.

The broad-based CoinDesk 20, an index of the largest tokens minus stablecoins, was down 0.56%.

CoinGecko data shows that the meme coin category surged 8% on average, outpacing more serious niches such as decentralized finance, yield farms, and exchange tokens.

Meme tokens started to run early Thursday amid speculations of DOGE being used on an upcoming payments service of social application X, although there has been no official communication from the company.

Bets on DOGE-tracked futures jumped to a record $2 billion, indicative of expectations of future price volatility with a bias toward longs.

Dog-themed tokens such as floki (FLOKI) and WIF jumped as a beta bet to dogecoin. WIF flipped pepecoin (PEPE) to become the third-largest meme token by market capitalization, crossing the $4 mark on Thursday.

Meanwhile, some trading firms warned of a pullback in recent gains as bitcoin and ether price action showed signs of exhaustion.

“The price rally has been exponential in Q1, and there are signs of exhaustion,” Singapore-based QCP Capital said in a Telegram broadcast Friday. “ETH risk reversals are skewed to the downside at -8%, indicating some fear. Funding and forwards remain very elevated, which means that speculators are still paying high prices to keep their leveraged longs.”

“While we remain bullish, we are cautious about leverage,” the firm concluded.