Friday's jobs report showed the US lost 23,000 jobs in July. Economists expected a gain of about 80,000. Unemployment fell to 4.1% anyway, but only because 264,000 people stopped looking for work, and the share of Americans working or hunting for a job is the smallest since early 2021.

A soft jobs market ties the Fed's hands. Raising rates into layoffs is hard to defend, so the bets moved fast.

Markets that priced three hikes at the height of the oil scare now expect roughly one, and Milk Road's Monday call argues even that one never lands. The new Fed chair, Kevin Warsh, has five task forces rereading how the Fed measures inflation and jobs. If most of them come back leaning toward lower rates, he has his cover to cut.

Cheaper money is the fuel crypto has waited on all summer.

And the response? Nothing. Bitcoin has sat in the mid-$60Ks for weeks and trades this morning near $64,000, down 1.5% on the day.

The sentiment gauge reads 29, Fear, one point lower than yesterday. Ecoinometrics calls this bitcoin's best-looking recovery in months and says the deciding test is still ahead.

That test lands tomorrow at 8:30 a.m. Washington time, when the government publishes July's inflation report. A cool number clears the road: cheap money moves closer, and anyone who believes in the old four-year cycle will want to finish buying before October, into a market holding very little loosely owned bitcoin. Buying like that tends to crowd into the same few weeks.

A hot number revives the other story, where Cleveland Fed president Beth Hammack is already arguing for a hike bigger than the usual quarter point. Tomorrow's number decides which of those stories gets to run.

On Saturday, Iran's top security official, Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, listed what it would take to reopen the Strait of Hormuz: the US permanently ends the war, lifts the naval blockade, withdraws its forces, drops every sanction, frees Iran's frozen money, pays war reparations, and stops the insults. Read it twice and it sounds like a country that thinks it is winning.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent had told television viewers a deal could come that same day. Instead the talks broke down, Iran reportedly attacked a ship from the UAE, and Brent crude jumped 5% to $87.72.

The crypto link runs through oil. It is the one inflation input the Fed cannot control, and it feeds straight into the number crypto is waiting on tomorrow morning.

Michael Saylor's Strategy sold another 1,690 bitcoin for $108.6 million last week, its second straight week of selling, and this time for less than the coins cost it. Every dollar went to buying back about 1.15 million shares of STRC, one of its preferred share classes, at around $94 against a $100 face value.

This is the policy Saylor already disclosed, running on schedule: when bitcoin is not appreciating fast enough, the company sells coins rather than stock to defend the preferreds. The market's patience is thinner this time. Bitcoin fell about 2% after Monday's disclosure, where last week's sale barely registered.

The world's largest corporate holder, sitting on 840,447 coins, is now a documented weekly seller. The repair is working, and bitcoin is funding it.