Three tests land in one week. The first is employment data, with the release of April payrolls, the first reading after a delay caused by the 2025 federal shutdown.
A weaker-than-expected figure gives the Federal Reserve cover to cut sooner. A strong one delays it. The second is additional information about bitcoin treasury trading.
Strategy, Coinbase, MARA, CleanSpark, Hut 8, and Core Scientific report Q1 earnings for the week. Riot already sold 3,778 BTC last quarter at an average of $76,626. MARA sold 15,133.
The third is the Federal Reserve itself. San Francisco Fed CEO and President Mary Daly and Chicago Fed President Austan Goolsbee will discuss central bank independence at Hoover on Friday, the same week that Jerome Powell steps down as chairman (but not the Fed itself) under pressure from the White House.
“Investors are not strongly positioned and volatility remains low, creating an asymmetric setup: markets appear stable on the surface, but could react quickly to any catalyst that forces a risk review,” Jennifer Hanny, partner at Echo Base, told CoinDesk.
What to watch
(All times ET)
- Crypto
- May 4: Coinbase will delist dai (DAI) and convert remaining tokens to USDS.
- May 4: ZKsync Lite will be completely deprecated.
- Macro
- May 4, 11:30 pm: Reserve Bank of Australia interest rate decision estimated at 4.35% (forecast 4.1%)
- May 5, 09:00 am: US JOLT job openings for March (was 6.882 million)
- May 5, 09:00 am: US ISM Services PMI, estimated April 54 (previous 54)
- May 6, 4:00 am: March YoY Eurozone Producer Price Index (previously -3%); Monthly (previous -0.7%)
- May 6, 07:15 am: US ADP employment change for April (previous 62K)
- May 6, 6:50 p.m.: Minutes of the Bank of Japan’s monetary policy meeting
- May 7, 07:30 am: US initial unemployment claims for the period ending May 2 (previous 189K)
- May 7, 3:30 p.m.: US Federal Reserve balance sheet for the period ending May 6 (previous: $6.7 trillion)
- May 8, 7:30 am: Canada unemployment rate for April (was 6.7%)
- May 8, 07:30 am: US nonfarm payrolls for April estimated at 73,000 (was 178,000)
- May 8, 07:30 am: US unemployment rate for April estimated at 4.3% (forecast 4.3%)
- May 8, 07:30 am: US average monthly hourly earnings for April estimated 0.3% (previously 0.2%); YoY (previous 3.5%)
- May 8, 09:00 am: US Michigan Consumer Sentiment Preliminary for May (previous 49.8)
- May 8, 06:30 pm: US Federal Reserve Chairs Mary Daly and Austan Goolsbee will participate in a conference on “Independence, structure and future risks for central banks”
- Earnings (Estimates based on FactSet data)
- May 5: Strategy (MSTR), post-market, -$12.95
- May 5: PayPal Holdings (PYPL), premarket, $1.27
- May 5: Cipher Digital (CIFR), premarket, -$0.08
- May 5: MARA Holdings (MARA), post-market, -$0.45
- May 6: Hut 8 (HUT), premarket, -$0.34
- May 6: Core Scientific (CORZ), post-market, -$0.04
- May 7: Coinbase Global (COIN), post-market, $0.26
- May 7: Block (XYZ), post-market, $0.60
- May 8: TeraWulf (WULF), premarket, -$0.19
- May 8: CleanSpark (CLSK), post-market, -$0.23
symbolic events
- Governance votes and calls
- Lido DAO is voting on an urgent proposal to temporarily reduce EarnETH’s first-loss protection trigger below the standard 1% threshold, ensuring full compensation for users if the rsETH shortfall is resolved through DeFi United. Voting ends on May 6.
- Beefy DAO is voting to authorize its Treasury Board to conduct private, discretionary BIFI buybacks whenever the token price falls below its calculated “fair value.” Repurchased tokens will be held as non-circulating supply. Voting ends on May 6.
- World Liberty Financial is voting to restructure the vesting for locked WLFI tokens. Early supporters will receive a 4-year vesting schedule, while insiders must burn 10% of their allocation and agree to a 5-year vesting deal. Voting ends on May 6.
- Arbitrum DAO is voting to release 30,766 ETH frozen by its Security Council after the Kelp DAO exploit to the DeFi United recovery fund. Voting ends on May 7.
- CoW DAO is voting on whether to use its Legal Defense Reserve to reimburse users who lost $1.2 million in the April 14 cow.fi domain hijacking. Voting ends on May 7.
- Mantle DAO is voting to lend up to 30,000 ETH to Aave as a 36-month structured line of credit, benchmarked against the yield on Lido’s stETH stake plus a 1% spread, as part of DeFi United’s rsETH recovery. Voting ends on May 8.
- Unlock
- May 5: Ethena (ENA) will unlock 2.12% of its circulating supply worth $17.34 million.
- May 6: Hyperliquid (HYPE) will unlock 0.18% of its circulating supply worth $17.5 million.
- Token releases
- May 5: Virtual Protocols OPG airdrop snapshot is expected to take place.
- May 8: The final airdrop of the SoSoValue testnet is expected to be completed.
- May 4-10: The 35th quarterly BNB burn is expected to occur.
