Research · Macro
Bitcoin and the Macro Cycle
The series people overlay on bitcoin charts — the Fed funds rate, M2, net liquidity, credit spreads, the VIX — published raw, and then tested. For each series, the page tests whether recent changes were associated with bitcoin's return over the following quarter, at leads from zero to twenty-six weeks, with a bootstrap interval and a baseline from the same series shifted in time. Whether “liquidity leads bitcoin” is a claim with a lead and an interval, not a chart with two lines.
Current readings
Computed from the daily public snapshot for 14 October 2026, published 2026-10-15 11:22 UTC. The charts and tables below are drawn in the browser from the same file; these figures are the ones they show.
| Dollar index | 121.60 | 2.5% over 30 days |
|---|---|---|
| 10-year real yield | 2.88% | 0.28 over 30 days |
| Fear and greed | 62 | 67th percentile |
Does it lead? Each series against bitcoin's next quarter, at every lead
| Series | Change measured | Best lead | Correlation there | Bootstrap 90% interval | Shifted-series band | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Net liquidity | 13-week % change | 0 wk | 0.18 | 0.02 to 0.36 | ±0.34 | no evidence beyond the band |
| US M2 | 13-week % change | 0 wk | 0.12 | -0.07 to 0.29 | ±0.22 | no evidence beyond the band |
| Fed funds rate | 13-week change, pts | 7 wk | 0.15 | 0.00 to 0.37 | ±0.24 | no evidence beyond the band |
| 2-year yield | 13-week change, pts | 0 wk | -0.25 | -0.41 to -0.05 | ±0.26 | marginal: at the edge of the band for 3 leads |
| High-yield spread | 13-week change, pts | 26 wk | -0.41 | -0.67 to -0.17 | ±0.45 | no evidence beyond the band |
| VIX | log level | 0 wk | -0.04 | -0.24 to 0.21 | ±0.15 | no evidence beyond the band |
| 10y breakeven | 13-week change, pts | 7 wk | -0.10 | -0.24 to 0.11 | ±0.21 | no evidence beyond the band |
None of the 7 series shows a relationship the shifted baseline cannot produce. 2-year yield (-0.25 at lead 0) sit at the edge of the band — close enough that the verdict would move with the random draws, which is what “marginal” means here. The rest sit inside the band at every lead: their overlays on a bitcoin chart describe two series that both rose in 2020–21, not a lead. Weekly observations since 2013: 720; the widest interval is what three cycles buy.
Net liquidity and price
What is not here, and why
- ISM manufacturing PMIproprietary (ISM / S&P Global); no free primary feed since FRED dropped it in 2016. Not substituted with a scraped number
- Global M2an author-specific blend of central-bank aggregates converted at spot; no single public definition. US M2 is published; the blend is not, and the famous “global M2 leads bitcoin by ten weeks” chart is not reproducible as published
- Real yields and the dollaralready carried on the Flows page from the same FRED feed; the dollar index and the 10-year real yield are read there
Method
All series come from FRED as keyless CSV and are published raw in macro.json. Weekly alignment takes the last available value in each week ending Wednesday; monthly M2 steps once a month; net liquidity is assembled from its three legs (Fed assets and the Treasury account are published in millions of dollars, reverse repo in billions; all are converted to trillions). The macro “impulse” is the thirteen-week change (percentage change for M2 and net liquidity, change in points for rates and spreads, log level for the VIX). The bitcoin target is the forward thirteen-week log return of the daily-average price. Correlations are Spearman with midranks. The bootstrap resamples 26-week moving blocks of the paired weekly observations, 200 draws, and reports the 5th and 95th percentiles; the baseline band comes from 200 circular shifts of the macro series by 52 to 260 weeks, which keeps each series' own autocorrelation and removes any relationship to bitcoin. A verdict of evidence requires the observed correlation to sit outside the shifted band by a margin of 0.03 with the bootstrap interval excluding zero, at three consecutive leads; a reading within 0.03 of the band for three leads is reported as marginal rather than rounded up to evidence. Each series uses its own fixed random seed, so adding a series cannot change another's verdict.
What it cannot tell you
Roughly 700 weekly observations contain three or four macro cycles, and the 2020–21 episode — liquidity and bitcoin rising together — is one episode however many weeks it spans; the block bootstrap treats it accordingly, which is why the intervals are wide. A correlation at a lead is not a mechanism, and a series that led in one cycle need not lead in the next. The page reports what the data support at each lead and how wide the uncertainty is; it does not turn that into a forecast, and neither should a reader.