How Bitcoin reacted to the Core Personal Consumption Expenditures on 26 August 2026

Measured by Clometrix

Bitcoin's volatility ratio was 3.94x, against 2.03x for a typical Core PCE release since 2021. Its volume ratio was 4.77x, against a typical 2.52x. That is a strong reaction by this release's own standard. Both compare the quarter hour of the release with an ordinary quarter hour that same day, where 1.00x is no change: volatility is how far the price ranged, volume how much traded.

How Bitcoin moved

Bitcoin was at $78,713.70 when the figure came out. Fifteen minutes later it was 0.57% lower, and an hour later 0.84% lower. Its high-to-low range in the hour after was 1.02% of its price, against 0.54% in the hour before.

The release

Released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis on 26 August 2026 at 8:30 AM EDT. The Core Personal Consumption Expenditures came in at 0.2% for July 2026, against 0.1% in June 2026. Core prices are rising faster than before.

It arrived at the same moment as Durable Goods Orders, Durable Goods Orders Excluding Transportation, Gross Domestic Product Report, Personal Income and Outlays and Personal Consumption Expenditures, so the reaction measured on this page belongs to all of them together.

What made it matter

Since 2021, Core PCE releases in the two weeks before a Fed decision have moved Bitcoin more than those at other times: a median volatility ratio of 2.09x across 17, against 1.81x across 52. This one was not within two weeks of a Fed decision. Its own ratio of 3.94x compares with 1.81x for those, so it moved the price more than its circumstances alone would suggest.

Its record

Across 69 Core PCE releases since 2021, Bitcoin's median volatility ratio is 2.03x.

What it means

Bitcoin registered a strong reaction to the Core PCE release and the cluster of data that arrived with it. Volatility reached 3.94x the level of an ordinary quarter hour that day, well above the 2.09x median recorded across 69 prior Core PCE prints since 2021. Volume expanded to 4.77x its typical level against a 2.55x benchmark. The price stood at $78,713.70 at the moment of release, then fell 0.57 percent within fifteen minutes and 0.84 percent within the hour, while the hourly range widened to 1.02 percent from 0.54 percent beforehand.

The print landed twenty days before the September Federal Reserve decision and therefore outside the two-week window that has historically produced a higher median volatility ratio of 2.13x. Even so, the observed 3.94x ratio exceeded both the non-window median of 1.81x and the median for releases inside the two-week window.

The episode illustrates that distance from policy meetings does not always limit price movement in Bitcoin. While releases inside the two-week window have shown a modest edge in the record, this instance produced a larger swing than either category's central tendency, leaving traders with evidence that individual data batches can override the usual timing effect.

What is the Core Personal Consumption Expenditures?

Every Core PCE release for Bitcoin