Raoul Pal: Bitcoin Now Mirrors ISM Business Cycle — Five-Year Cycle Points to 2026 Q2 Peak

In a recent podcast, Real Vision co-founder and CEO Raoul Pal argued that Bitcoin is increasingly tracking the ISM business-cycle signal, with market rates moving in tandem. He framed this alignment as a synchronization between crypto price action and traditional monetary indicators, noting that shifts in the ISM often presage adjustments in interest rates and liquidity conditions.

Pal pointed out that Treasury operations extended the debt’s weighted average maturity from four to five years, effectively stretching the historical “four-year cycle” into a five-year cycle. His model projects the ISM apex in 2026, with liquidity dynamics likely to peak earlier as the second derivative (the rate of change) turns; he identified Q2 2026 as the most probable window for the cycle peak.