Bitcoin shrugs off 3.4% CPI: why the macro trade stopped working

For the third consecutive month, a major inflation print failed to move Bitcoin in either direction. The asset that was supposed to trade on rate cut expectations is trading on something else entirely, and the market has not yet agreed on what that something is. Summary The July CPI report landed at 3.4% year over year and 0.1% month over month on August 12, exactly matching consensus. Bitcoin moved from $63,800 to $64,100 over four hours, a 0.47% change on a data point that used to produce 5% to 10% swings. Bitcoin’s correlation with the Global Easing Breadth Index, which tracks monetary policy across 41 central banks, has inverted from +0.21 before the spot ETF approval in January 2024 to negative 0.778 in 2026, nearly three times stronger in the opposite direction. Perpetual futures trading activity sank to a three year low ahead of the August 12 release, and options markets priced only 1.3% expected movement, signaling that traders had stopped treating CPI as a catalyst before the number was even released. Strategy’s seven week buying hiatus and $108.6 million Bitcoin sale on August 10 have removed the reflexive bid that previously amplified macro catalysts. The company that bo...