As many analysts on Crypto Twitter have discussed recently, Bitcoin tends to follow global M2 with a 12-week lag.
This means Bitcoin goes up around 90 days after a global money supply increase. The global M2 supply has recently increased, so bulls are using this as evidence that Bitcoin is about to rip.
However, the timing and scale vary more than most are sharing.
Short-term volatility, long-term drift
Correlation metrics anchored to a 90-day lag show that while liquidity trends tend to precede Bitcoin’s directional movement, other variables, including ETF inflows, macro policy surprises, and halving narratives, frequently modulate or obscure the signal.
Since the 2021 bull run, the 180-day rolling Pearson correlation between Bitcoin and a forward-shifted global M2 index oscillates between +0.95 and –0.90.
This amplitude points to structural periodicity rather than persistent linkage, as monetary expansion and contraction periods often fail to sync neatly with Bitcoin’s market cycles.
Despite such fluctuations, the post-ETF period from January 2024 through April 2025 maintains a more positive long-term correlation of roughly 0.65. This correlation, however, is gradually weakening at present.
If past cyclical trends hold, Bitcoin may become decoupled from global M2 for several months.
Bitcoin’s price behavior, though still broadly liquidity-driven, has decoupled at key moments.
Q1 2024 saw BTC rise vertically during spot-ETF approvals and Halving excitement, despite only muted movements in global M2. These divergences manifested in a negative 30-day correlation, before short-term alignment returned by April 2025, with the metric now sitting at 0.67.
This whipsaw effect is most evident in the 30-day rolling correlation series, which flipped between -1 and +1 multiple times over 2024–25.
Such volatility reinforces that Bitcoin’s short-term price action is heavily shaped by idiosyncratic crypto-native flows, including leverage washouts and ETF rebalancing. These bursts introduce noise into the signal that a macro-only model cannot isolate.
The 180-day measure, meanwhile, reveals slower mean-reverting cycles that tend to unfold over 10 to 12 months. This reflects broader policy regimes, including periods of quantitative easing, liquidity tightening, or hybrid scenarios such as stealth injections through liquidity facilities.
Directionally, Bitcoin remains responsive to monetary base shifts, but the window for this response appears flexible.
Magnitude mismatch and timing dislocations
The most recent liquidity inflection since Sept. 2024, a roughly 2% uptick in global M2, coincided with a nearly 70% surge in the BTC spot price, which is now trading at approximately $93,800.
According to TradingView data, the global M2 index stood at 92.9 as of April 23. The disproportionate price response points to amplified sensitivity or additional catalysts beyond traditional liquidity models.
ETF flows and stablecoin credit expansion represent parallel liquidity streams that do not register within standard M2 constructs.
When large-scale net creations occur within Bitcoin ETFs, as observed in early 2024, they generate directional buying without being visible in macro monetary aggregates. The result is an increasingly elastic relationship in which global M2 serves more as a background rhythm than a predictive engine.
The slope of M2 momentum may offer more utility than absolute levels. A decelerating M2 means the tailwind is weakening even if the correlation remains positive.
This perspective reflects market pragmatism, emphasizing relative changes in liquidity velocity over static cross-sectional values.
Policy, event risk, and structural noise
Three macro variables may complicate correlation readings over Q2 2025.
First, U.S. debt ceiling volatility and shifts in the Treasury General Account could mechanically alter dollar liquidity. Second, the FOMC’s mid-year guidance on rate cuts could reinforce or disrupt existing trajectories. Third, legislative moves around tariffs may constrain US liquidity, impacting the broader crypto credit cycle.
Regional dispersion further limits the clarity of the M2 signal. With the US, China, and Japan constituting the bulk of the M2 index, divergent policy tracks among these economies dilute the global average. A central bank deviating from collective easing or tightening skews the composite figure, introducing noise that may mislead macro-model adherents.
Lastly, revisions to M2 figures remain nontrivial. With reporting lags and restatements common, correlations calculated in real time may be altered retroactively, complicating backward inference and strategy calibration.
Recalibrating the model
While the core thesis that “liquidity drives Bitcoin” remains directionally valid, the elasticity of this relationship illustrates the limitations of applying macro models in isolation.
ETF market structure, halving cycles, regulatory policy, discretionary trading flows, and other macro indicators inject enough complexity to disrupt otherwise clean macro overlays.
Traders interpreting Bitcoin-M2 correlations as leading signals must contend with a landscape where structural breaks, regime shifts, and alternative liquidity conduits continually reshape the inputs.
Liquidity is oxygen for risk assets, but there’s now more than one oxygen tank for Bitcoin.
