Where the business cycle stands
44th percentile of history · data as of 6/1/2026
Related: Liquidity and Bitcoin · KM Cycle Index
The copper/gold ratio against the Bitcoin price
Two-month MACD with BTC cycle tops
| Cycle top | BTC price | MACD histogram |
|---|---|---|
| 112/5/2013 | $1,137.00 | +0.0313 |
| 212/17/2017 | $19,280.00 | +0.0367 |
| 311/9/2021 | $67,562.00 | +0.0507 |
| 410/7/2025(in progress, top not confirmed) | $124,777 | −0.0425 |
The histogram in the table is the value of the two-month bar the top fell into. The 2013, 2017 and 2021 tops all arrived while business cycle momentum was positive — the 2024 cycle is the first where the two parted ways.
US factory activity against Bitcoin
Business cycle and liquidity against Bitcoin
Both curves are percentiles within their own history so they can be compared: 0 is the weakest reading that measure has ever had, 100 the strongest. Liquidity starts in 2011 because older balance sheets have no Bitcoin to compare against.
Related: Liquidity and Bitcoin
The copper/gold ratio is an old business cycle barometer. Copper gets consumed when the world builds, manufactures and invests; gold gets bought when it is afraid. A rising ratio means the economy is accelerating and risk assets tend to do well — a falling one means capital is retreating to safety. Historically it tracks the ISM PMI and the yield curve closely.
The two-month MACD filters the noise out of that ratio: the difference between a short and a long moving average on two-month bars (EMA 12/26, signal 9 — that is 24, 52 and 18 months). A positive histogram means cycle momentum is accelerating. It is computed from the logarithm of the ratio so the number means the same thing in 1995 as it does today.
There is no ISM PMI here, on purpose. ISM licenses its data and FRED stopped publishing it at their request back in 2016; no free source with history across whole cycles exists. The stand-in is the average of the regional Fed manufacturing surveys (Philadelphia, New York, Dallas), which measure the same thing — new orders, production and employment in manufacturing. Their line between expansion and contraction sits at zero rather than at fifty like the PMI.
The vertical ticks in the charts are the tops of past Bitcoin cycles, computed from the same daily price history as on the Cycle page. This is not investment advice — four tops are far too few for statistics; they are context, not a rule.