NEW YORK, Jan 8, 2026, 10:23 (EST) — Regular session
Bitcoin slipped on Thursday and kept U.S.-listed crypto-linked shares on the defensive in morning trade. The token was down about 0.9% at $90,380, after ranging between $91,640 and $89,312. Coinbase fell 0.2%, while Strategy slid 1.3% and BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF was down about 0.8%; miner Marathon rose 0.8% but Riot fell 1.6%.
One immediate drag: fund flows. U.S. spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds — ETFs, products that trade like stocks — logged $486 million of net outflows on Wednesday, with BlackRock’s IBIT and Fidelity’s FBTC seeing the biggest withdrawals, according to Barron’s. 1
Macro is sitting on top of everything this week. U.S. initial jobless claims rose 8,000 to 208,000 in the latest week, the Labor Department said, and economists polled by Reuters had expected 210,000. The claims data do not feed into Friday’s nonfarm payrolls report, but that report is expected to show job growth slowing and the unemployment rate easing to 4.5%, the Reuters survey showed. 2
The labor-market read-through matters for bitcoin because rate-cut bets still swing risk assets. The Chicago Fed estimated the U.S. unemployment rate was unchanged at 4.6% in December, while economists polled by Reuters expect the official rate to edge down to 4.5% when the government reports on Friday. Markets are pricing only about a 10% chance of a Fed cut at the Jan. 27-28 meeting, rising to roughly 55% by late April, Reuters reported. 3
There has also been no shortage of crypto-specific headlines. Morgan Stanley has filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to launch ETFs tied to bitcoin and solana, according to the filings. “A bank entering the crypto ETF market adds legitimacy to it, and others could follow,” Morningstar ETF analyst Bryan Armour said. 4
For bitcoin proxy stocks, index rules are another moving part. MSCI shelved a plan to exclude “digital asset treasury” companies — firms that hold tokens like bitcoin as a key treasury asset — from its indexes and said it would open a broader consultation later, Reuters reported. “It removes a material near-term technical risk,” Clear Street analyst Owen Lau said, while JonesTrading’s Mike O’Rourke said he suspected exclusion had simply been pushed back “until later in the year.” 5
But the setup is fragile. A hotter payrolls print could push yields higher and sap demand for assets that do not pay interest, and another day of heavy ETF redemptions would test liquidity just as traders lean on the $90,000 level again.
Next up is Friday’s U.S. jobs report, with broader markets already trading cautiously into it. Wall Street opened lower on Thursday ahead of the payrolls data, Reuters said, a tone that has tended to bleed quickly into crypto when positioning gets crowded. 6
