The Australian dollar slid to a three-week low against its US counterpart in Asian trading on Thursday, as open selling accelerated following gloomy labor market data out of Australia.

The data showed that the country's unemployment rate rose to its highest level in three and a half years, with fewer jobs added than expected in June. This marked the latest sign of slowing economic growth in Australia and increased the likelihood of a rate cut by the Reserve Bank of Australia in August.

The Price

• AUD/USD today: The Australian dollar dropped by 0.9% to (0.6473), its lowest level since June 24, down from the day’s opening level of (0.6553). It recorded a session high at (0.6533).

• On Wednesday, the Australian dollar rose 0.2% against the US dollar — its first daily gain in four sessions — following weaker-than-expected US producer price data.

Australian Labor Market

Figures released Thursday by the Australian Bureau of Statistics showed that the unemployment rate climbed to 4.3% in June, its highest level since November 2021, up from 4.1% in May and exceeding market expectations for a rise to 4.1%.

The Australian economy added around 2,000 new jobs in June, falling well short of market expectations for 21,000 jobs, after losing around 1,100 jobs in May.

The soft labor market is the latest indication of weak economic growth in Australia, which may prompt the Reserve Bank of Australia to ease monetary policy and cut interest rates.

Comments and Analysis

• IG analyst Tony Sycamore said: "There are clear signs of labor market weakness. This raises questions about the RBA’s decision to prioritize inflation over growth and employment at its meeting earlier this month."

• Sycamore added: "There’s no doubt the RBA will be keen to correct course at its August meeting."

• Harry Murphy Cruise, head of economic research at Oxford Economics Australia, stated: "While we’re not ringing alarm bells just yet, June’s slowdown is another solid reason for the RBA to move cautiously toward rate cuts."

Australian Interest Rates

• Following the labor market data, interest rate swap contracts now imply more than 50 basis points of easing by year-end.

• Market pricing for a 25-basis-point rate cut by the RBA in August rose from 76% to 85%.

• The RBA has cut rates twice since February, bringing the benchmark rate to 3.85%, as inflation has slowed into the target range of 2% to 3%.

Wheat prices rose on Wednesday in the Chicago Board of Trade, after the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) released its global forecasts for key crops for the 2025/26 marketing year, according to reports from the Ukrainian Agribusiness Club.

According to the USDA forecast, Ukraine’s wheat production for the 2025/26 marketing year will decline by 1 million tons to reach 22 million tons. Wheat exports are also expected to drop by 1 million tons to 15.5 million tons. As for corn, both production and export forecasts remained unchanged at 30.5 million tons and 15.5 million tons, respectively.

The global wheat market outlook for the 2025/26 marketing year points to a decline in supply (due to lower beginning stocks), an increase in consumption, a decrease in trade, and a drop in ending stocks.

Global wheat production for the 2025/26 marketing year remains unchanged at 808.6 million tons. However, output will fall in Canada (down 1 million tons to 35 million tons), Ukraine (down 1 million tons to 22 million tons), and Iran, while rising in Kazakhstan (up 1 million tons to 15.5 million tons), the European Union (up 0.7 million tons to 137.3 million tons), Pakistan, and Russia (up 0.5 million tons to 83.5 million tons).

Global consumption will rise by 0.8 million tons to reach 810.6 million tons, mainly driven by higher feed and residual use in Kazakhstan and Thailand.

Global trade will decline by 1.2 million tons to 213.1 million tons due to reduced exports from the European Union (down 2 million tons to 32.5 million tons) and Ukraine (down 1 million tons), partially offset by increased exports from Russia (up 1 million tons to 46 million tons) and the US (up 0.7 million tons to 23.1 million tons). Global ending stocks for 2025/2026 have been revised down by 1.2 million tons to 261.5 million tons, mainly due to reductions in Canada and the European Union.

Corn

Corn futures for December delivery rose by 1.1% at the close of the session to $4.24 per bushel.

Soybeans

Soybean futures for November delivery jumped by 1.8% to $10.20 per bushel.

Wheat

Wheat futures for September delivery settled 0.7% higher at $5.41 per bushel.

Ethereum recorded a 5.9% daily gain, reaching $3,155, supported by a 20.1% rise over the past week amid a growing wave of publicly traded companies accumulating the cryptocurrency in their treasuries.

This move pushed Ethereum’s price to its highest level since early February, according to CoinGecko data, and led to the liquidation of $85.4 million in short positions over the past 24 hours, according to CoinGlass.

Earlier this month, Minnesota-based SharpLink Gaming announced it had acquired $225 million worth of Ethereum, according to a press release issued Tuesday. The company had pivoted from online gambling marketing to Ethereum accumulation in May, after raising $425 million in funding and adding Ethereum co-founder and Consensys CEO Joseph Lubin to its board of directors.

With this move, SharpLink became the public company with the largest Ethereum treasury on the market, with its holdings reaching 280,000 ETH after the latest purchase — equivalent to $884 million at the current price. As a result, the company’s stock (SBET) has surged more than 1,000% since its pivot to crypto, according to TradingView.

Similarly, BitMine Immersion Technologies announced last month the establishment of its own Ethereum treasury. The Bitcoin mining company had raised $250 million in late June to build up an ETH reserve, with Tom Lee of Fundstrat joining as chairman of the board.

Since then, the company has purchased more than $500 million worth of Ethereum, and its stock (BMNR) has soared over 1,100% since the first ETH purchase, according to TradingView. In a notable development, Peter Thiel and his Founders Fund acquired a 9.1% stake in the company on Tuesday.

Bitcoin mining firm Bit Digital also announced last month that it had ceased mining operations to focus on Ethereum-based treasury and staking strategies. Last week, the company converted its entire reserves into Ethereum, reaching 100,603 ETH — valued at more than $316 million at today’s prices. Then on Monday, it announced a $67.3 million stock sale to purchase additional ETH.

Kevin Rasher, founder of the RAAC lending and borrowing ecosystem, said in a note shared with Decrypt: “Ethereum is no longer just a speculative tool — it’s now a yield-generating, programmable financial asset that institutions view as a store of value. This is a major factor supporting ETH’s price, as treasury allocations reduce circulating supply and reflect long-term confidence.”

These are just a few examples of a broader trend in the markets, where public companies are establishing crypto treasuries to boost their stock performance, drawing inspiration from Michael Saylor’s strategic approach to Bitcoin adoption.

For instance, Canadian company Cannabis Sativa rebranded itself as Dogecoin Cash before purchasing $3.5 million worth of Dogecoin.

More recently, a group of investors announced a $540,000 purchase of the Solana-based meme token Dogwifhat, with plans to take their company public via a reverse merger — a move aimed at riding the wave of institutional crypto investment.

At the time of writing, Ethereum was up 9.75% to $3,363.7 on CoinMarketCap as of 20:40 GMT.

Researchers from three prestigious universities — Durham, Oxford, and Toronto — have published a new scientific paper offering guidance for exploring underground hydrogen deposits, claiming that the planet’s reserves could, in theory, meet all energy needs for many years to come — to such an extent that the figure cited might seem like fanciful exaggeration if repeated. (See: Ballentine, et. al. “Natural hydrogen resource accumulation in the continental crust,” Nature Reviews Earth & Environment).

While we don’t know if these professors are right, any article quoting numbers of this magnitude is bound to attract attention.

In the meantime, money continues to pour into the sector — though not necessarily from the major players in traditional oil. We previously noted that Australian mining giant Fortescue acquired a major stake in an Australian company drilling in the U.S. Midwest. Results from those wells are expected this summer.

Now, three major Japanese firms — Toyota, Mitsubishi, and ENEOS Xplora (an oil company) — have invested in an Australian company with promising prospects within Australia, with drilling likely to begin later this year.

We should also not forget the recent discovery in France of what is being promoted as the world’s largest natural hydrogen field. The French government has issued permits to several companies, including a subsidiary of the French utility giant Engie. Given the scale of the discovery and the strength of the players involved, the activity underway in France may well be the spark that propels this industry forward.

Could France become the world’s top hydrogen supplier?

All of this exploratory activity comes at a critical moment for hydrogen advocates. Producing hydrogen using renewable energy remains expensive. The massive plants President Trump is trying to shut down are doing exactly this — and they require substantial government support to kickstart the “green hydrogen” sector as a sustainable energy source.

In contrast, natural hydrogen may be price-competitive — without needing subsidies — so why pay more for the same green fuel?

There would be no need for all the infrastructure and equipment involved in industrial hydrogen production.

However, the question of infrastructure still looms: how will the hydrogen be transported, and in what form? But that may be a matter for later — once we know where these natural deposits are and how widespread they are geographically.

Could mountains lead us into the age of natural hydrogen?

A new study identifies promising zones for natural hydrogen discovery through tectonic plate modeling

Developing geologically sustainable energy resources is one of the major challenges for humanity in the 21st century. Hydrogen gas (H₂) holds enormous potential to replace today’s fossil fuels while eliminating CO₂ emissions and other associated pollutants.

But the key hurdle is that hydrogen must first be produced — and current industrial hydrogen production, even when sometimes powered by renewable sources, can still be polluting if based on fossil energy.

The solution may lie in nature itself, as various geological processes can generate natural hydrogen. However, until now, it has remained unclear where to search for potentially large underground accumulations of this gas.

A research team led by Dr. Frank Zwaan of the Geodynamic Modeling section at the GFZ Helmholtz Centre for Geosciences in Germany now offers a promising answer to this question.

Using tectonic plate modeling, the team discovered that mountain ranges containing rocks from deep within the Earth’s mantle close to the surface may represent potential “hotspots” for natural hydrogen. These ranges may not only offer ideal environments for large-scale natural hydrogen generation, but also allow for significant accumulations that could be extracted through drilling.

The findings were published in Science Advances. The team included Prof. Sascha Brune and Dr. Anne Glerum from the same department, as well as scientists from Tufts University (Dr. Dylan Vessey), New Mexico Tech (Dr. John Naliboff), the University of Strasbourg (Prof. Gianreto Manatschal), and the company Lavoisier H2 Geoconsult (Dr. Eric C. Gaucher).

The potential of natural hydrogen in tectonic environments

Natural hydrogen can be generated in several ways, including bacterial decomposition of organic matter or the breakdown of water molecules caused by radioactive decay in the Earth’s continental crust. As a result, occurrences of natural hydrogen have been reported in various locations around the world.

The viability of natural hydrogen as an energy source has been demonstrated in Mali, where small amounts are extracted from iron-rich sedimentary layers via drilled wells.

But the most significant and promising mechanism for large-scale hydrogen generation is the reaction of mantle rocks with water — a process known as serpentinization — in which the mineral composition transforms into serpentine minerals while producing H₂ gas.

These rocks are typically located deep beneath the Earth’s crust, so tectonic uplift is needed to bring them closer to the surface to interact with water.

This phenomenon generally occurs in two tectonic settings: ocean basins that form when continents split apart, allowing mantle rocks to rise as the crust thins — as in the Atlantic Ocean — and mountain ranges that form when continents collide again — as in the Alps or the Pyrenees — pushing mantle rocks upward.

Numerical modeling to pinpoint natural hydrogen zones

To better understand these tectonic environments, the GFZ team employed advanced numerical plate modeling to simulate plate evolution from initial continental rifting to full mountain formation.

In these simulations, the researchers were able to identify — for the first time — when, where, and in what volumes mantle rocks rise to the surface, and under what water and temperature conditions serpentinization and natural hydrogen production become viable.

They found that mountain ranges provide far better conditions than rift basins for hydrogen generation, with optimal temperatures (200–350°C) more prevalent and large volumes of water flowing through major fault lines.

Hydrogen production in mountainous regions could be 20 times higher annually compared to rift basins.

Additionally, the porous rock types needed to trap economically viable hydrogen accumulations — such as sandstone — are often present in mountain ranges, while typically absent in the deep settings where serpentinization occurs in rift environments.