US inflation data goes dark: Shutdown wipes out October CPI, leaving Bitcoin hanging
The CPI blackout: what happened
Short version: thanks to a government shutdown, the Bureau of Labor Statistics couldn’t collect prices in October. No field surveys = no official CPI print. The last bona fide report we have is for September (index level 324.80; headline and core both at 3.0% year-over-year). The usual November-ish drop of inflation gossip never arrived — the CPI calendar now shows a Dec. 10 placeholder that might or might not carry October’s missing data.
Officials have warned that because the shutdown covered the full data-collection window, October could be impossible to reconstruct in the usual, respectable way. That means we’re staring at an unusual gap in the economy’s monthly scoreboard, and — surprise — politicians started blaming each other while markets tried not to panic.
Why crypto cares — three scenarios and what traders will do
Crypto traders have been hogging the front row for CPI days, parking leverage, funding and risk around the print. When the number disappears, it’s not the value of the missing data that hurts — it’s the absence of an event that markets had alligned for. The result this week: a bout of volatility anyway. Spot Bitcoin slid roughly 6% in a thin-liquidity session, open interest ticked down, and a lot of directional bets went into the closet.
Normally there’s a tidy chain: softer CPI → yields fall → dollar weakens → risk assets, including Bitcoin, rally. Hot CPI does the opposite. With no October number, desks shifted to speeches, swaps, options positioning and secondary indicators to form views. In short, the macro vacuum turned crypto into a play on expected policy rather than a day-trading extension of equities.
Now markets are pricing three broad possibilities for Dec. 10 (or whatever eventually appears):
1) Reconstruction: BLS tries to piece together October with partial samples, imputation or models. Traders would likely treat this as lower-quality data. If the month looks tame (say, ≤ 0.2% monthly), we’d probably see the usual pattern: dollar softens, yields drift down, Bitcoin gets a modest bounce, Ethereum and high‑beta alts outperform in the short term.
2) Sticky middle: a print around 0.3–0.4% month-on-month leaves policy signals murky. Expect narrow moves in yields, crypto likely flat to slightly negative, and marginal traders trimming risk. Funding rates could slip into mildly negative territory as short-term hedges dominate.
3) Hot reading (≥ 0.5%): that would firm expectations for tighter policy, lift the dollar and push Treasury yields higher. In past episodes this combo has led to multi-percent intraday drops in Bitcoin (often 3–6%), larger swings in Ethereum, and heavy deleveraging across altcoins — with liquidation volumes spiking several times normal levels.
There’s a fourth, weirder outcome: the BLS decides October can’t be credibly reconstructed and simply leaves a gap. Then the next clean read would reflect November, stretching the gap between hard data points to almost two months. That kind of uncertainty forces markets to lean on inflation swaps, breakeven markets and nowcasting (think card spending, freight rates, online prices) to guess what’s really going on.
Practically speaking, a world with irregular or missing monthly inflation prints nudges crypto toward being a macro-smoothed asset class. Short-term data-driven spikes would fade; ETF flows, structural demand from long-only allocators, dollar liquidity plumbing and policy communication would carry more weight. Capital tends to consolidate into deeper, more liquid names — hello Bitcoin — while altcoins that live off leverage and hype could find fewer supporters until normal data flow resumes.
Bottom line: this story isn’t about a surprise number yet. It’s about an empty slot on the calendar. The last confirmed CPI point is September (324.80 index; 3.0% headline and core). Dec. 10 is the next box on the sheet — currently blank — and markets are pricing that blank in real time. So until the BLS fills the void, crypto traders are left guessing, hedging, and occasionally doing what traders always do: blaming the calendar and buying the dip (or dramatically failing to).
Stay nimble, keep your risk checks on, and maybe don’t trade off a calendar hole — unless you enjoy suspense and mild financial heartburn.