What to know: By Francisco Rodrigues (All times ET unless indicated otherwise)
Markets seem bullish ahead of the jobs report due later Friday, with bitcoin (BTC) rising toward $97,000 after stocks rose for an eighth straight day on Thursday. That gave the S&P 500 its longest rally since August as investors grew more confident that trade tensions between Washington and Beijing are cooling.
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Still, the CoinDesk 20 (CD20) index is little changed over the last 24 hours with the drop in first-quarter GDP pointing to economic strain from the trade war. While traders are now betting the Federal Reserve could cut interest-rates four times this year — one more than they'd priced in before the reciprocal tariffs were announced — personal consumption expenditures (PCE), the Fed's preferred measure of inflation came in above forecasts, which limits the central bank's room for easing, said James Butterfill, the head of research at CoinShares.
Today's payrolls data remains a “critical piece of the puzzle,” he said.
“When the Fed eventually decides to cut rates, it is likely to do so in a knee-jerk and forceful manner — reacting to a significant deterioration in economic conditions rather than being proactive. Such a dramatic policy shift could act as a catalyst for a significant breakout rally in bitcoin, as investors seek alternative stores of value amid aggressive monetary easing,” Butterfill said.
That policy shift could align with bitcoin’s historical performance. Since 2013, the cryptocurrency has seen an average gain of 7.52% in May, according to CoinGlass data. And it's not alone: ether (ETH), which has been significantly underperforming BTC, has posted an average gain of 27.3% in May since 2016, the best-performing month for the Ethereum blockchain's token.
“Investor confidence is gradually returning to crypto markets following a volatile start to the year, with April seeing a rebound across majors as tariff-driven macro fears eased,” said Vijay Chetty, CEO of Eclipse. Growing regulatory clarity is an “underappreciated catalyst that will set the stage for broader institutional use cases,” Chetty added. Stay alert! |
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Crypto: -
May 5, 3 a.m.: IOTA’s Rebased network upgrade starts. Rebased moves IOTA to a new network, boosting capacity to as many as 50,000 transactions per second, offering staking rewards of 10%-15% a year and adding support for MoveVM smart contracts.
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May 5, 11 a.m.: The Crescendo network upgrade goes live on the Kaspa (KAS) mainnet. This upgrade boosts the network’s performance by increasing the block production rate to 10 blocks per second from 1 block per second.
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May 6: Casper Network (CSPR) launches its 2.0 mainnet upgrade, introducing faster transactions, enhanced smart contracts, and improved staking features to boost enterprise adoption.
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May 7, 6:05 a.m.: The Pectra hard fork network upgrade will get activated on the Ethereum (ETH) mainnet at epoch 364032. Pectra combines two major components: the Prague execution layer hard fork and the Electra consensus layer upgrade.
Macro - May 2, 8:30 a.m.: The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics releases April employment data.
- Nonfarm Payrolls Est. 130K vs. Prev. 228K
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Unemployment Rate Est. 4.2% vs. Prev. 4.2%
- May 2, 9 a.m.: S&P Global releases Brazil April purchasing managers’ index (PMI) data.
- Manufacturing PMI Prev. 51.8
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May 2, 11 a.m.: S&P Global releases Mexico April purchasing managers’ index (PMI) data.
- Manufacturing PMI Prev. 46.5
- May 5, 9:45 a.m.: S&P Global releases (Final) U.S. April purchasing managers’ index (PMI) data.
- Composite PMI Est. 51.2 vs. Prev. 53.5
- Services PMI Est. 51.4 vs. Prev. 54.4
- May 5, 10:00 a.m.: Institute for Supply Management (ISM) releases U.S. April economic activity data.
- Services PMI Est. 50.6 vs. Prev. 50.8
Earnings (Estimates based on FactSet data) -
May 6: Cipher Mining (CIFR), pre-market, $-0.07
- May 8: Coinbase Global (COIN), post-market, $2.08
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May 8: Hut 8 (HUT), pre-market
- May 8: MARA Holdings (MARA), post-market
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Compound DAO is voting on moving 35,200 COMP (~$1.5 m) into a multisig safe to test selling covered calls on COMP for USDC, lend that USDC in Compound for extra yield, then use the returns to buy back COMP and repeat—targeting roughly 15 % annual gain. Voting ends May 2.
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May 5, 4 p.m.: Livepeer (LPT) to host a Treasury Talk session on Discord.
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- May 2: Ethena (ENA) to unlock 3.10% of its circulating supply worth $53.44 million.
- May 7: Kaspa (KAS) to unlock 0.56% of its circulating supply worth $13.84 million.
- May 9: Movement (MOVA) to unlock 2.04% of its circulating supply worth $9.85 million.
- May 11: Solayer (LAYER) to unlock 12.87% of its circulating supply worth $79.71 million.
- May 12: Aptos (APT) to unlock 1.82% of its circulating supply worth $62.09 million.
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- May 2: Binance to delist Alpaca Finance (ALPACA), PlayDapp (PDA), Viberate (VIB), and Wing Finance (WING).
- May 5: Sonic (S) to be listed on Kraken.
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