Which Macro Events Move Crypto? How BTC, ETH and SOL Reacted to 167 US Releases in 2025–2026

Crypto trades around the clock, but it does not ignore the US economic calendar. Traders know that a Federal Reserve decision or an inflation print can move Bitcoin — what is less clear is how much, for how long, and which of the dozen recurring releases actually matter. To answer that with data rather than anecdotes, we measured the reaction of Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH) and Solana (SOL) to 167 US macro releases between January 2025 and October 2026.

The short answer: three events dominate — FOMC rate decisions, CPI inflation and the monthly jobs report. Producer prices (PPI) and personal consumption (PCE) produce smaller, shorter bursts. GDP and weekly jobless claims barely register. And almost all of the extra movement happens in the first one to two hours.

What we measured

For each release we took the exact publication time — 8:30 a.m. New York time for most data, 2:00 p.m. for FOMC decisions — and measured three things on one-minute Binance spot candles:

• Price range: the distance between the highest and lowest price in the 15 minutes, 1 hour and 24 hours after the release, as a percentage of the price just before it.
• Realized volatility: the square root of the sum of squared one-minute returns over the same windows — the standard measure of how much the price actually moved.
• Direction: whether the first 15-minute move held at the one-hour and 24-hour marks.

Every number is compared with the same window at the same time of day on ordinary weekdays with no scheduled US release — 305 baseline days in total. That removes the normal intraday rhythm of the market: a figure of 2.0× means the move was twice as large as a typical day at that exact hour, not twice the daily average. Release dates come from the archived publication records of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (ALFRED) and the Federal Reserve's FOMC calendar, including the dates shifted by the 2025 government shutdown.

The ranking: which events move crypto

Median price range in the hour after each release, relative to a normal weekday at the same time (average of BTC, ETH and SOL):

Bar length is scaled to 3×. A value of 1.0× means no difference from an ordinary weekday.

The full picture across all three windows. Price range first:

Realized volatility over the same windows tells the same story:

Medians across BTC, ETH and SOL, each normalised to its own baseline. Values in grey are not statistically distinguishable from a normal day (one-sided Mann–Whitney test, p > 0.05).

Finding 1: Three events stand far above the rest

FOMC decisions, CPI and the jobs report are in a league of their own. In the first 15 minutes after them the price range was 3.5–3.6 times its normal size, and over the first hour still 2.1–2.7 times. For Bitcoin, a normal hour after 8:30 a.m. New York time has a median range of 0.58%. After CPI it was 1.16%, after the jobs report 1.21%, and after an FOMC decision 1.58% (against 0.58% on a normal day at 2:00 p.m.).

These are the releases that most directly change expectations for interest rates — the Fed's own decision, and the two data points that weigh most on it. Crypto, as a risk asset priced partly on liquidity and rate expectations, responds accordingly.

Finding 2: PPI and PCE matter, but less

Producer prices and the PCE price index — the Fed's preferred inflation gauge — lift first-hour volatility by roughly 1.5–1.7 times. The effect is real and statistically clear, but it is smaller and fades faster. One reason: by the time PPI and PCE are published, CPI has usually already told the market much of the inflation story for that month.

Finding 3: GDP and jobless claims barely register

The quarterly GDP estimate showed a brief burst in the first 15 minutes, but with only seven releases in the period and no lasting effect, the result is not statistically reliable. Weekly jobless claims — published every Thursday — had no meaningful effect: on Thursdays when claims were the only release, realized volatility ticked up slightly in the first 15 minutes (1.2×), and the hour as a whole looked like any other weekday.

Finding 4: The spike is short — one to two hours

Over a full 24 hours, the excess range shrinks to about 1.3–1.4 times normal after FOMC and CPI and disappears for everything else. Measured by realized volatility, even the FOMC and CPI residual is only borderline significant. In other words, macro releases concentrate movement into a short window rather than making the whole day more volatile.

Finding 5: The first move usually holds for an hour, not for the day

After CPI, NFP, PPI and PCE, the direction of the first 15 minutes matched the direction at the one-hour mark in 79% of cases, against 66% at the same time on ordinary days. By the next day, the first move matched the 24-hour direction only 59% of the time (49% on ordinary days) — only somewhat better than a coin toss. The initial reaction tells you about the next hour far more than about where the day will close.

FOMC days behave differently. The decision is published at 2:00 p.m. and the Chair's press conference starts at 2:30 p.m. In our data, the first half hour of the press conference moved Bitcoin about as much as the first half hour after the statement (median range 1.15% vs 1.10%). The market often reacts twice.

Finding 6: Ethereum and Solana react more in absolute terms, not in relative terms

In percentage moves, ETH and SOL swing more than BTC on release days — for example, a median first-hour range of 2.1% (ETH) and 2.0% (SOL) after CPI, against 1.2% for BTC. But they are also more volatile on ordinary days, so relative to their own baselines all three coins react with similar intensity.

Finding 7: Market fear does not change the size of the reaction

We split releases by the level of the VIX volatility index on the previous close. Relative to ordinary days in the same regime, first-hour reactions were almost identical: 1.9× when the VIX was below 20 and 1.8× when it was 20 or above. Calm markets do not make releases safe, and nervous markets do not make them dramatically worse.

Real examples from the data

• CPI, February 12, 2025. Bitcoin fell 2.1% in the first 15 minutes and was still down 1.9% at the one-hour mark — a move that held. A day later it was down only 0.7%.
• FOMC, October 29, 2025. The first 15 minutes took Bitcoin down 0.6%, and the slide continued: −1.0% at the one-hour mark and −3.9% over 24 hours.
• FOMC, January 28, 2026. A quiet first hour (−0.2%) gave no warning of what followed: Bitcoin was 6.8% lower 24 hours later, the largest one-day move after an FOMC decision in the sample. Over a full day, other news and flows mix with the release itself.
• FOMC, January 29, 2025. The opposite pattern: −0.8% in the first 15 minutes, then a reversal to +0.7% within the hour and +2.6% over 24 hours.
• Jobs report, September 4, 2026. Bitcoin dropped 2.0% in 15 minutes, 2.5% within the hour, and was still 2.1% lower a day later.

The examples show the pattern behind the averages: the size of the reaction is fairly predictable from the calendar; its direction and follow-through are not.

What this means for crypto traders

1. Know the calendar. FOMC, CPI and the jobs report are the dates that matter most. Treat PPI and PCE as secondary, and GDP and jobless claims as background.
2. Expect a wider range in the first hour. A stop or a level that is comfortable on a normal day can be reached by noise after a major release. Position size and stop distance should account for that.
3. Do not treat the first move as the verdict. It tends to hold for the hour, not for the day. Plan scenarios for both directions rather than betting on one.
4. Read macro together with the chart. A release changes how far price can travel; the technical structure — levels, trend, momentum across timeframes — still decides where it is likely to stop.

How EDGE uses this

For the slower macro forces behind crypto — the dollar, real yields, liquidity and ETF flows — see what moves the Bitcoin price. For how to turn a wider range into a plan, see trading with scenarios and expectancy.

EDGE was built on the same principle: analysis starts with computed data, not with opinions. Its algorithms calculate the technical picture from exchange data across four timeframes, pull macro context and the economic calendar for the day, and then AI assembles everything into a single plain-English brief — naming the scheduled releases, the key levels and the scenarios for each direction. The point is not to predict the release, but to make sure it is never missing from the picture.

Methodology and limitations

• Period: January 2, 2025 to October 8, 2026 (the last release with a full 24 hours of data after it).
• Events: 14 FOMC decisions, 20 CPI, 21 jobs reports (NFP), 20 PPI, 20 PCE, 7 GDP releases (first estimate of each quarter) and 65 Thursdays when jobless claims were the only release — 167 events in total. Release dates were taken from archived publication records (ALFRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis) and the Federal Reserve's FOMC calendar. Two PCE reports published at 10:00 a.m. during the 2025 shutdown period were timed accordingly.
• Prices: one-minute spot candles for BTC/USDT, ETH/USDT and SOL/USDT from Binance.
• Baseline: the same windows at 8:30 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. New York time on 305 weekdays with no scheduled release in our set.
• Overlaps: some releases share a time slot — PPI and CPI often coincide with jobless claims, and since February 2026 GDP and PCE are published together. Each release is counted under its own name; reactions on shared slots cannot be separated.
• Surprise: we measure the size of the reaction, not its relation to economists' forecasts. Consensus forecasts are not available from a free official source.
• Statistics: significance is tested at the level of each release date (averaging the three coins) with a one-sided Mann–Whitney test against the baseline days. Direction statistics pool the three coins, which move together, so they should be read as indicative.
• Sample size: the conclusions for GDP rest on only seven releases and are not reliable.