Goldman Economist Eyes 0.25 Fed Cut: Will Bitcoin Catch The Wave?

Over the past month or so, Bitcoin has fallen while the Nasdaq and S&P 500 have gained. Will the bulls be back after the spigots turn up the overnight cash markets?

Bitcoin is down by 6% over the 30 days ending Friday, Sept. 13, while the Nasdaq Composite is up 3.7% for the month’s trades and the benchmark S&P 500 Index is up 4% over the same period.

So what gives with Bitcoin?

Is Wall Street putting bearish selling pressure on crypto prices with outflows from the Bitcoin ETFs and going shopping with the money for NVDA, TSMC, and ASML to just bet on the chips and let Reddit users figure the rest out?

Are Bitcoin miners selling to keep up with rising industrial electricity costs since April?

Goldman Sachs Economist: 25 – 50 Basis Pt Cut

“I wouldn’t rule out 50 basis points, but 25 basis points strikes me as more likely,” said Goldman Sachs chief economist Jan Hatzius on Monday.” “I think there is a solid rationale for doing [a 50 basis point cut]. And the rationale is that five and three-eighths, five and a quarter to 5.5% is a really high fed funds rate. It’s the highest policy rate in the G10.”

Hatzius added the US has seen more progress on inflation than most of the G10.

Will Bitcoin’s Price Go Up When The Fed Cuts Rates?

Past results don’t guarantee future performance, but history does tend to repeat and winners tend to win again. The US benchmark interest rate is a macro tide that raises big boats like hot Wall Street stocks and Bitcoin’s decentralized Internet economy.

Past low-rate macro environments have correlated with massive Bitcoin gains. The period of most stellar ROIs for BTC holders was during the 2010s when rates were low before the line for BTC begins on the graph below.

When rates dropped to zero in 2020, Bitcoin’s price surged nearly 8x to record highs. As the Fed walked the rate up, Bitcoin settled back down to 2x its pre-pandemic level. By late 2023, the Fed simply stopped raising rates and BTC went berserk.

Now there’s the crypto news cycle that was a big part of that, with years of anticipation for a Bitcoin ETF starting to gel around that time. But the multi-month correlations to monetary policy is tight and in accordance with economic supply and demand theory.

Three past Bitcoin four-year supply cycles saw enormous rallies with peak prices 12 – 18 mos. after the halving. The most recent Bitcoin halving took place on April 19.