Bitcoin vs M2: What the Correlation Data Actually Shows

Method before number, because that is the order this argument keeps getting wrong. What follows cites one source for every asset-side figure (CF Benchmarks, published 2026-03-19, data through 2026-02-01), names the series behind every money figure, and states the window on every rate. We hold no Bitcoin price series. Correlation is not causation. We say that first, because this crowd says it first too.

On that footing: Bitcoin and global M2 moved together for over a decade, then broke apart in 2025. CF Benchmarks measured global M2 up about 12% over twelve months while Bitcoin fell roughly 12% over the same stretch (published 2026-03-19). Their rolling R² fell to about 0.59 over the same window.

Correlation, not causation — said first

“It’s a correlation until it isn’t,” one reader wrote under the original 352-upvote M2 thread (u/TheRadishBros, r/Bitcoin, 2025-05-13). We put that line first, not last, because burying it is how a chart gets torn apart in the comments.

A 34-upvote reply named the specific charge: the chart is “comparing a linear progression to a logarithmic one, so it’s tailor made to fit a preconcieved [sic] trend” (u/nicsenespomnem, r/Bitcoin, 2025-05-13). A second reply, 10 upvotes, put it as “data ‘manipulated’ to fit a narative [sic]” (u/Embarrassed-Bowl-230, r/Bitcoin, 2025-05-13). Both are claims about method, not vibes, and we quote them as written rather than tidied. We check them below.

The published method: what a bitcoin vs m2 chart is actually plotting

Search bitcoin vs M2 and eight overlay charts answer before we do: coinglass, newhedge, bitbo, bgeometrics, bitcoinmagazinepro, cfbenchmarks, longtermtrends — including coinglass’s own “Bitcoin Price and Global M2 Supply & Growth.” Each puts M2 on one axis, Bitcoin price on a second. That split isn’t automatically dishonest: Bitcoin’s price has moved across several orders of magnitude since 2010; M2 has moved across roughly one. So most chart-makers set Bitcoin on a log scale and M2 on a linear one — a log scale overlay — or index both to 100. The risk the commenter named is real: two free-floating axes, plus a shifted “lead,” let a chart-maker fit almost any two rising lines together, real link or not.

The fix drops the dual-axis chart for a number on the fit. CF Benchmarks runs a rolling regression: Bitcoin’s beta to global M2 sits near 11.3, and the fit quality — R², a real correlation coefficient, not a chart’s visual overlap — answers “how correlated” (CF Benchmarks, published 2026-03-19, data through 2026-02-01). We don’t run our own overlay chart; that would need the Bitcoin price series we don’t hold.

Which M2 should you use — US or global?

Every chart answers this a different way — the real reason two bitcoin vs m2 charts disagree. Four numbers sit under the same three letters. The Fed’s own headline M2 (FRED M2SL) reads $23.16T for June 2026. We track a wider number instead — IMF harmonised broad money, MFS_MA/BM_MAI — at $30.68T (2025-12), roughly $7-8T higher. The IMF definition counts more instrument types. CF Benchmarks’ own “global M2,” used above, is a third figure, built for their model and not stated as a total. A fourth: StreetStats and MacroMicro sum four major central banks — Fed, ECB, PBoC, BoJ — and land at $102.66T-$103.28T, both checked 2026-08, on our own global-M2 page. Our own full sum, across 159 of the 185 economies we track, is $144.41T through 2026-06. None of the four is wrong. Each counts a different set of countries under the same central bank liquidity story.

The 3-month lead, the 10-week lead — can we reproduce it?

“Can anyone explain how the 3 month lead is calculated? Is it estimated?” asked one reader, 2 upvotes (u/manugd, r/Bitcoin, 2025-05-13). No — as far as we can find, nobody has published the steps.

A lead time like this comes out of a lead/lag analysis: run the correlation across a range of offsets, keep whichever offset scores best. That is a legitimate method and an honest one only when the window is stated with the result, because the winning lag moves the moment the window moves. Quote the lag without the window and you have quoted the output of a search, not a finding. CF Benchmarks’ own method (2026-03-19) uses no fixed lead at all; it runs a rolling model and reports beta and R² quarter to quarter, with no “10 weeks” or “3 months” constant anywhere in it. We treat that number, wherever it turns up, as folklore rather than fact.

When the correlation held, and when it broke

Two past runs back the liquidity correlation story; a third breaks it, as of early 2026. During the COVID shock, M2 rose roughly 8% in six months and Bitcoin gained 8.5%; gold gained 11.5%, and world stocks cut a loss to 7.7% (CF Benchmarks, published 2026-03-19). In the 2022 tightening, M2 shrank 2.7% and Bitcoin fell 52.4% — a high-beta mirror image; the same source put Bitcoin’s R² at 0.71-0.90 that year, so the liquidity drop explained most of the fall. Neither run is in dispute.

The break is now. Over the twelve months to early 2026, global M2 grew roughly 12% while Bitcoin fell roughly 12%, and R² fell to about 0.59. CF Benchmarks’ model put Bitcoin’s “fair value” near $136,000 against an actual price near $74,000 as of 2026-02-01 — a 46% gap, one of the widest in their dataset. Bitcoin’s own supply clock, the BTC halving cycle, cuts new supply roughly every four years, most recently April 2024, on its own schedule — a live confound for any story leaning on USD liquidity alone. So is Bitcoin’s shifting company: the same source measured a three-month correlation of 0.78 between Bitcoin ETFs and loss-making tech stocks, the 97th percentile since December 2014 — a sign Bitcoin trades with other risk-on assets right now, not purely the macro liquidity cycle.

How far back does this correlate — the real ceiling

“How far back does this correlate?” drew 89 upvotes under the original thread (u/Epicurus1, r/Bitcoin, 2025-05-13) — the top question in that thread. Every rival overlay we checked starts its chart around 2013. Ours doesn’t have to: our US series runs to 1960 by year, 2001 by quarter, 138 readings in all; our world sum holds readings back to 2008. None of that depth helps here, and we’d rather say so than let the number imply it does. Bitcoin’s genesis block dates to 2009-01-03; its first widely quoted exchange price followed in 2010. The true ceiling on any bitcoin vs m2 chart is Bitcoin’s own trading life, about sixteen years as of 2026, not the fifty-plus years our series covers alone. A 2013 start isn’t a trick — it’s already inside the only window that could ever exist.

Is there a site that tracks this?

“Is there a website where this correlation is consistently updated ?” asked one reader, 12 upvotes (u/Broad-Assistance-437, r/Bitcoin, 2025-05-13) — a request for a product, not a chart. Half of that we can promise, and it is worth being exact about which half, because “updated monthly” means different things per row.

We re-pull the money-supply side monthly and log every figure that moved. What actually arrives each month varies by series. Most IMF country rows publish monthly. The US row publishes quarterly — 138 observations since 1960, currently at 2025-12 — so between quarters our US number does not move, however often we check. The world sum shifts as member rows land, and sits at 2026-06.

The other half isn’t ours at all. We hold no Bitcoin price series, so we cannot update the Bitcoin side of any overlay. A page claiming to keep a correlation current while owning only one of its two inputs would be selling exactly the thing this page was written to argue against.

The cost of an unverified correlation

A 46% gap between a model’s “fair value” and the real price cuts both ways: the link could snap back, the way it did after 2022, or it stays broken and the model is chasing a ghost. In real time, nobody — us included — can tell which from the chart alone. Sizing a position on a lag nobody can derive, read off two axes picked to fit, is sizing a position on a curve-fit.

The macro debasement thesis this chart is usually deployed to support may well be right. It is not this chart that establishes it, and one overlay is not evidence for a thesis about fifty years of monetary policy. We publish our half of the inputs and name what we can’t see; that’s the whole offer.

Our own part stops at the money-supply half. For money growth and prices, see money supply vs inflation; for the dollar’s debasement rate, see currency debasement; for gold against the same series, see M2 vs gold. Method: our methodology page.

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