The price of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies rose Tuesday afternoon after a roller-coaster ride over the past two days. Digital currencies had briefly traded sharply higher Sunday after President Donald Trump announced plans to create a strategic reserve of cryptos , before falling back down Monday.
But they had begun to pare Monday’s losses by 5 p.m. Eastern time Tuesday. Bitcoin is up 1.2% to $87,688 over the past 24 hours, according to CoinDesk data. It had previously jumped to $95,136 after Trump announced the crypto reserve on Sunday.
Most cryptos popped Sunday in response to the news of a crypto reserve. But by late Tuesday afternoon, of the five cryptos singled out by Trump for inclusion in the strategic reserve— XRP , Cardano , Solana , Bitcoin, and Ethereum —only XRP and Cardano had held on to significant gains. The rest were trading around their pre- announcement prices.
XRP, the digital coin used to facilitate and settle payments on the Ripple platform, rose 3% to $2.49, while Cardano rose 10% to 95 cents.
Ethereum gained 0.4% to $2,175 and Solana rose 1.5% to $145.
Before Tuesday’s uptick, FxPro analyst Alex Kuptsikevich said, “sentiment in the cryptocurrency market has returned to extreme fear territory,” noting that it was at its second-lowest level in more than 2½ years. Only on Thursday was sentiment worse.
Pressure in other markets has clipped the cryptocurrencies’ wings, Kuptsikevich added. The tariffs the president had threatened against Mexico and Canada took effect Tuesday , sending markets lower.
The Dow closed down 1.6%, erasing all its gains since the election. The Nasdaq Composite briefly slid into correction territory, before closing down 0.4%, and the S&P 500 fell 1.2%.
Sunday’s executive order to potentially include altcoins XRP, Solana, and Cardano in a U.S. crypto strategic reserve was also ill-received by the Bitcoin community, said Michael Terpin, CEO of Transform Ventures, a blockchain communications firm.
“While providing tax incentives to American crypto companies is a good idea, a strategic stockpile should only include the highest quality, truly decentralized digital asset: Bitcoin,” Terpin said. “Adding secondary cryptos controlled by companies and foundations would be akin to adding gold mining and energy stocks to the strategic gold and oil reserves.”
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JPMorgan Chase has a ‘strong bias’ against adding staff, while Walmart is keeping its head count flat. Major employers are in a new, ultra lean era.
It’s the corporate gamble of the moment: Can you run a company, increasing sales and juicing profits, without adding people?
American employers are increasingly making the calculation that they can keep the size of their teams flat—or shrink through layoffs—without harming their businesses.
Part of that thinking is the belief that artificial intelligence will be used to pick up some of the slack and automate more processes. Companies are also hesitant to make any moves in an economy many still describe as uncertain.
JPMorgan Chase’s chief financial officer told investors recently that the bank now has a “very strong bias against having the reflective response” to hire more people for any given need. Aerospace and defense company RTX boasted last week that its sales rose even without adding employees.
Goldman Sachs , meanwhile, sent a memo to staffers this month saying the firm “will constrain head count growth through the end of the year” and reduce roles that could be more efficient with AI. Walmart , the nation’s largest private employer, also said it plans to keep its head count roughly flat over the next three years, even as its sales grow.
“If people are getting more productive, you don’t need to hire more people,” Brian Chesky , Airbnb’s chief executive, said in an interview. “I see a lot of companies pre-emptively holding the line, forecasting and hoping that they can have smaller workforces.”
Airbnb employs around 7,000 people, and Chesky says he doesn’t expect that number to grow much over the next year. With the help of AI, he said he hopes that “the team we already have can get considerably more work done.”
Many companies seem intent on embracing a new, ultralean model of staffing, one where more roles are kept unfilled and hiring is treated as a last resort. At Intuit , every time a job comes open, managers are pushed to justify why they need to backfill it, said Sandeep Aujla , the company’s chief financial officer. The new rigor around hiring helps combat corporate bloat.
“That typical behavior that settles in—and we’re all guilty of it—is, historically, if someone leaves, if Jane Doe leaves, I’ve got to backfill Jane,” Aujla said in an interview. Now, when someone quits, the company asks: “Is there an opportunity for us to rethink how we staff?”
Intuit has chosen not to replace certain roles in its finance, legal and customer-support functions, he said. In its last fiscal year, the company’s revenue rose 16% even as its head count stayed flat, and it is planning only modest hiring in the current year.
The desire to avoid hiring or filling jobs reflects a growing push among executives to see a return on their AI spending. On earnings calls, mentions of ROI and AI investments are increasing, according to an analysis by AlphaSense, reflecting heightened interest from analysts and investors that companies make good on the millions they are pouring into AI.
Many executives hope that software coding assistants and armies of digital agents will keep improving—even if the current results still at times leave something to be desired.
The widespread caution in hiring now is frustrating job seekers and leading many employees within organizations to feel stuck in place, unable to ascend or take on new roles, workers and bosses say.
Inside many large companies, HR chiefs also say it is becoming increasingly difficult to predict just how many employees will be needed as technology takes on more of the work.
Some employers seem to think that fewer employees will actually improve operations.
Meta Platforms this past week said it is cutting 600 jobs in its AI division, a move some leaders hailed as a way to cut down on bureaucracy.
“By reducing the size of our team, fewer conversations will be required to make a decision, and each person will be more load-bearing and have more scope and impact,” Alexandr Wang , Meta’s chief AI officer, wrote in a memo to staff seen by The Wall Street Journal.
Though layoffs haven’t been widespread through the economy, some companies are making cuts. Target on Thursday said it would cut about 1,000 corporate employees, and close another 800 open positions, totaling around 8% of its corporate workforce. Michael Fiddelke , Target’s incoming CEO, said in a memo sent to staff that too “many layers and overlapping work have slowed decisions, making it harder to bring ideas to life.”
A range of other employers, from the electric-truck maker Rivian to cable and broadband provider Charter Communications , have announced their own staff cuts in recent weeks, too.
Operating with fewer people can still pose risks for companies by straining existing staffers or hurting efforts to develop future leaders, executives and economists say. “It’s a bit of a double-edged sword,” said Matthew Martin , senior U.S. economist at Oxford Economics. “You want to keep your head count costs down now—but you also have to have an eye on the future.”
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