Crypto News: Good news for jobs

This morning was unusual for data watchers, as the US reported its monthly jobs figures for January a few days late, after a partial government shutdown last week. Federal Reserve reporter Enda Curran writes about the ups and downs in the charts. Plus: Drug cartels are embracing crypto and freelance money launderers, and Americans have a growing appetite for fiber.

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The AI jobs apocalypse is on hold, at least for now. US companies hired at a surprisingly brisk pace in January, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, with the 130,000 jump in payrolls the most in more than a year. The unemployment rate unexpectedly fell, calming fears that employers are about to let workers go in favor of bots.

While hiring continues to be dominated by sectors such as health care and education, there were green shoots in other areas as well. Manufacturing added 8,000 roles after months of shedding jobs.

Brian Coulton, chief economist at Fitch Ratings, noted that in the past three months payroll gains averaged 73,000, which he described as a pretty healthy number.

"This contrasts with some recent lurid headlines following other data points on job cuts and falling vacancies," he said. "The downside risks to the labor market the Fed was fretting about late last year have not evaporated, but they definitely look to be receding."

President Donald Trump was quick to agree. In a social media post after the data was released, Trump hailed the "GREAT JOBS NUMBERS" and said the US should be paying the lowest interest rates globally.

What Trump didn't say is that the jobs data represents good news on the economy but bad news on rates, given there will be less pressure for the Federal Reserve to ease borrowing costs if people are holding on to their jobs. The Fed in January held interest rates steady, partly because it thought the labor market was stabilizing—a call that now looks good.

Still, there was plenty of caution from economists about reading too much into one month's print.

Revisions to last year's data showed a marked slowdown in hiring. Job gains averaged just 15,000 a month last year, down from the 49,000 pace that was initially reported. A separate revision showed that almost 900,000 fewer jobs were added from March 2024 to March 2025 than initially reported.

That means last year saw the weakest increase in US payrolls outside of a recession since 2003, when the job market was still recovering from the dot-com bust.

For the moment, the picture looks slightly more upbeat, said Seema Shah, chief global strategist at Principal Asset Management.

"Against a backdrop of powerful structural forces that are suppressing headline job creation—retirements, shifting immigration dynamics and AI-driven productivity gains—the payrolls figure points to a labor market that remains firmly intact," she said.

In Brief

Kraft Heinz halted plans to split in two, a surprising reversal weeks after bringing in a new chief executive officer with experience breaking up a food company.
Trump has anchored his security initiatives in the Western Hemisphere and Middle East. Asia remains a far more valuable sphere of influence.
Jeffrey Epstein flew veteran tech communications executive John Pinette to his home in Palm Beach, Florida, to discuss rebuilding Epstein's public image, four months before Epstein's arrest on federal sex trafficking charges in 2019.
What it's like to be a banker in wartime: The Russian unit of Austria's Raiffeisen is immensely profitable, but it can't get the money out of the country.

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Freelance Crypto Money Laundering

The pitch was simple: Crypto for "cold hard cash." No names. No questions asked.

David Scotese posted his ads online, but the transactions played out in the open, at Victory Park in Murrieta, California. The park was the heart of the community. Soccer games on the lawn. Birthday parties in the shade of a gazebo. And there in the parking lot, Scotese in a 10-year-old maroon Honda Accord.

In person he was an unassuming suburbanite with wire-rimmed glasses and neatly parted hair. But on LocalMonero.co, an online matchmaker for buyers and sellers of Monero, a so-called privacy coin, he was LetterGuy21969. It was at Victory Park that his offline life and online alias converged.

From at least 2021 to 2023, the US Department of Homeland Security says, Scotese ran his illicit business out of that parking lot, taking in cash and paying out the equivalent in crypto, minus a little something for himself.

Jessica Brice writes about a vast ecosystem that's sprung up to clean illegal cash: Drug Cartels Are Shifting Their Money Laundering to Crypto. Cops Can't Keep Up

A Bonus for Bankers and the City

$5 billion

Wall Street bonuses, along with an aggressive savings plan, have helped shrink New York City's expected two-year budget gap by roughly that amount, according to Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

Standing Tall for Fiber

Photographer: Maciek Miloch for Bloomberg Businessweek

For decades, nutrition experts have been urging Americans to eat more fiber. For decades, Americans have ignored them. But now it looks like they're finally paying attention.

First came healthier sodas, boasting not just lower sugar than regular pop but added fiber too. In January 2025, the creator of the famously indulgent Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams unveiled a fiber bar brand called Floura, which joined a growing list of new packaged-food products for the digestion-conscious consumer. Then we were deluged by TikTok "fibermaxxing" tutorials, with influencers talking up chia seeds, avocado and chickpeas. In restaurants, 45% of Americans are now actively seeking high-fiber options on menus, according to a recent survey from consultant firm Revenue Management Solutions, and even Chris Kempczinski, the chief executive officer of McDonald's Corp., which has close to zero fiber on its menu, has predicted it will be a major food trend this year.

For years, we've prioritized protein, all while fiber has been treated as a punchline, Deena Shanker writes, but that's changing: Fibermaxxing Is a Diet Trend Even Nutritionists Can Love

Undoing Deals

"I don't even think about USMCA. I want to see Canada and Mexico do well, but the problem is we don't need their product."

Donald Trump

US president

Trump is privately musing about exiting the North American trade pact, people familiar with the matter said, injecting further uncertainty about the deal's future into pivotal renegotiations involving the US, Canada and Mexico.