I noticed that when US inflation data is released, the crypto market literally jumps. Last week, that kind of story happened—ИПЦ is the metric that everyone waits for like a messiah. The figures for June 2024 came out below expectations, and Биткойн immediately reacted with a surge, then fell. Many KOL talk about this, but few explain why ИПЦ is actually the main thing for us in crypto.

Let’s break it down step by step. ИПЦ is essentially the Consumer Price Index—an indicator that tracks inflation. The easiest way to think of it is as the price of a basket of goods. A burger went up from 35 to 55 yuan, noodles from 80 to 140—that’s visible inflation. But governments look at it through ИПЦ to get the full picture. The calculation is simple in theory: take the prices of all goods from this year, divide by last year’s prices, and multiply by 100. In practice, it involves thousands of goods and weighted coefficients, but the essence is the same.

What’s important is that ИПЦ is not just statistics—it’s a signal for ФРС. When inflation is high, ФРС raises interest rates to cool down the economy. This happened after the pandemic. In 2020, all central banks started printing money, cut rates to zero, and launched quantitative easing. Money poured into the markets, and everything soared—stocks, real estate, crypto. That was the bull market of 2020–2021.

But the price of such madness is inflation. After 2020, it hit a 30-year high. ФРС began raising rates to stop it. The target figure is 2% per year. We’re already close to the goal, but rates remain high—above 5%.

That’s why it’s critical for crypto. High rates mean money is expensive. If you can put your money in a bank and get 5% per year, why buy a risky asset? Companies become more cautious about investments, and liquidity in the market drops. All three халвинга Биткойна before this happened when rates were low, below 1%.

When ФРС starts lowering rates, capital will get bored sitting in banks, and it will flow into risky assets. That’s when crypto could take off. That’s why everyone watches ИПЦ—it’s one of the main signals for ФРС. If inflation continues to fall, that means there’s a chance for rate cuts.

There’s also employment data that ФРС looks at. If the economy starts slipping into recession, rates could fall before inflation reaches the target 2%. But inflation is the red line.

The data is released every month between the 10th and 15th at 8:30 AM Eastern Time. If you hold contracts, you need to know these dates—the market can swing wildly after the numbers come out. For September, the market already expects the probability of rate cuts if inflation continues to fall.

In short, ИПЦ is not just a boring macroeconomic indicator. It’s a direct channel from the real economy to our crypto market. The faster inflation falls, the higher the chances of rate cuts, and the more capital will come into crypto. That’s why all KOL talk about it. Whoever understands the link between ИПЦ and the movement of money can see more clearly when the next wave might begin.