Bitcoin slides 2% as weak U.S. jobs data fails to sustain a rally, Blast L2 shuts down

The session's main driver was a September jobs report that badly missed expectations: the U.S. economy added just 29,000 jobs last month, well below forecasts, while unemployment rose to 4.2%. Crypto's first reaction was a brief rally — weak labor data historically raises the odds of Federal Reserve rate cuts, which tends to lift risk assets including crypto. Bitcoin touched the $85,000–$86,000 range intraday before sellers stepped back in and the rally faded. By the close, BTC was down 2.1% and most of the top 15 followed. The assets that fell hardest were those with less institutional anchoring. Zcash dropped 5.4%, Dogecoin fell 4.3%, and XRP slid 3.6% — none with a specific catalyst beyond the broad risk-off tone. Quant was the notable exception: reports that BNY Mellon is in infrastructure partnership talks with Kraken parent Payward sent traders toward assets tied to traditional finance-crypto integration, and Quant's Overledger protocol — which connects different blockchain networks — was a direct beneficiary. QNT gained 8.4% on the session. The Fear & Greed index sits at 67, still in greed territory, suggesting the market has not fully repriced the macro uncertainty. BTC dominance at 59.2% is holding firm, meaning the day's losses were spread broadly rather than concentrated in a flight to Bitcoin.

• –Blast, once a $2 billion Ethereum Layer-2 network backed by Paradigm, is shutting down after its total assets collapsed 98%, marking one of the most significant L2 failures to date and prompting fresh scrutiny of whether the broader L2 ecosystem can sustain its current scale.
• –A U.S. banking industry group filed suit against a federal regulator over the granting of crypto trust charters, adding legal uncertainty to the custody landscape at a moment when traditional finance is moving closer to crypto infrastructure.
• –Circle pushed back against a European Union rule under MiCA (the EU's crypto regulatory framework) that would require stablecoin issuers to hold a portion of reserves in bank deposits — a requirement Circle argues threatens USDC's European operations.