October opened with a risk spike as the US government shut down, yet Bitcoin (BTC) pushed higher alongside other majors while gold printed fresh records.
As of press time, Bitcoin traded at $117,402.84, up by 3% in the past 24 hours. The immediate read is classic “chaos bid.”
Yet, beneath the knee-jerk, there’s a more important mechanism for crypto. A data blackout blurs the Federal Reserve’s path and, by extension, the flows into spot exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that have become Bitcoin’s dominant marginal buyer.
When Washington goes dark, so do the numbers that anchor global macro. The Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Bureau of Economic Analysis, and the Census Bureau suspend their collections and publications during a shutdown.
As a result, the monthly US jobs report, consumer price index (CPI), and retail sales either slip or go missing entirely. That deprives rates traders and ETF allocators who key off those markets of the inputs they use to price cuts into the curve.
In this cycle, it’s especially acute because investors were already leaning toward further easing in 2025. Removing non-farm payrolls (NFP) and CPI at precisely the moment positioning is sensitive tends to widen confidence intervals and lift volatility.
Altering conditions
Flows ride the dollar and real yields. The shutdown initially pressured the dollar and nudged markets toward earlier cuts, a mix that has historically been kind to non-yielding assets.
That’s one likely reason for the upside in crypto markets due to the funding lapse. However, the exact mechanism can flip, as the absence of data spooks the market into a “wait-for-proof” stance, and the dollar can firm amid fading risk appetite.
A risk-off environment could starve ETFs of fresh inflows and tighten spot liquidity, which is why the blackout amplifies whichever macro narrative emerges next.
There’s also a plumbing angle. A shutdown pushes financial regulators onto skeleton crews, slowing nonessential processing.
For the whole cry
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Author: Gino Matos
