US Inflation and the Fed: Bitcoin Before November 10

US consumer prices for October are published on Tuesday, November 10, 2026, at 8:30 am New York time (13:30 UTC). It is the last inflation reading the US central bank will have on the table before its rate decision on December 9: the November figure only follows on December 10, a day after the meeting. Anyone who wants to know whether the Fed will hike in December gets the decisive input on November 10, not later.

For you as an investor this is not an economic date to tick off. It is a calendar entry with a price attached. The price of Bitcoin has been visibly tied to the expected rate path for months, and a number that lands in the middle of the European trading afternoon hits leveraged positions first. On Saturday evening Bitcoin traded at around $77,600 and Ethereum at about $2,255; over 24 hours the market as a whole was down a good two percent.

US inflation data on November 10: date, time and source

The consumer price index, CPI for short, is the official measure of inflation in the United States. It is compiled and released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, an agency inside the US Department of Labor. The release schedule of the Bureau of Labor Statistics lists November 10 for the October data and December 10 for the November data.

The time never changes: 8:30 am on the US East Coast. Because the United States has its clock change behind it by early November, that works out to 13:30 UTC on this date, and 2:30 pm in Germany. It is early afternoon in Europe, an hour before US equity markets open, and it is the moment when bond yields, equities and crypto prices are repriced within seconds.

One point for context: the index always covers the previous month. On November 10 you learn how prices moved in October against September and against the same month a year earlier. Two values are published, and specialists keep them strictly apart: the headline rate across all goods and services, and the core rate, which leaves out energy and food.

From the inflation figure to the crypto price

The link runs through three stages, and it is not a theory. Stage one: higher inflation makes a rate hike more likely. Stage two: higher rates lift the yields on US government bonds, and the more a risk-free paper pays, the less attractive an asset without a running income becomes. Stage three: that pressure shows up first where people work with borrowed money.

Last week showed how fast this happens. On October 30, according to data from the research firm SoSoValue, investors pulled a net $643 million out of the US spot Bitcoin ETFs, the largest single-day outflow since June; the funds run by BlackRock and Fidelity accounted for roughly $234 million and $201 million of that. A different count arrives at about $410 million for the same day, so the range runs from a good $400 million to just under $650 million. An ETF, short for exchange traded fund, is an exchange-listed fund that tracks the Bitcoin price here; its inflows and outflows are the most visible channel through which institutional money enters the market and leaves it again.

How that mechanism worked at the last rate meeting is traced in our analysis of the Fed rate decision of October 28, and what a priced-in December step means for leveraged positions is set out in the piece on the Fed rate hike and crypto leverage.

The November figure only arrives a day after the Fed meeting

This is the actual reason why this single date carries more weight than an ordinary data point. The meeting calendar of the Federal Reserve puts the last meeting of the year on December 8 and 9. The statistical agency’s release schedule sets the November consumer prices for December 10.

One day lies between the two dates, and it lies on the wrong side. The central bank decides on December 9 with the October index as its most recent consumer price reading. The December meeting is also one of the four meetings a year at which the central bank publishes its own projections for growth, unemployment and interest rates. That is why the calendar marks it with an asterisk. The expectations that form on November 10 therefore feed straight into the numbers the central bank presents a month later.

In practice that means the following: November 10 is the last schedulable occasion on which market expectations for the December rate realign around a hard number. After that, only speeches by individual central bankers and labour market data remain before the meeting.

CPI, core rate and PCE: three inflation gauges that get mixed up

This is where numbers regularly get confused in news coverage, and whoever mixes them up draws the wrong conclusions. Three values are circulating for September 2026, and they belong to three different gauges.

The consumer price index rose 3.7 percent year on year in September and 0.6 percent on the month. Petrol became 9.1 percent more expensive and accounted for about half of the increase. The core rate of the consumer price index, the index without energy and food, came in at 2.6 percent year on year and 0.3 percent on the month. Both values landed above the consensus of analysts, who had expected 0.2 and 2.5 percent.

The third value, the often quoted 3.1 percent, is something else: it is the core rate of the PCE index, published by the US Department of Commerce on October 29. PCE stands for personal consumption expenditures, the prices of private consumer spending. That index weights spending differently and takes into account that households switch to cheaper goods when prices rise. Its headline rate stood at 3.6 percent in September.

The difference is not a detail for statisticians. The central bank has explicitly tied its two percent target to the PCE index, not to the consumer price index. The CPI, in exchange, appears earlier and is therefore the one traded in the market. When you read a number on November 10, it is worth checking which of the three is meant: a core rate of 2.6 percent and one of 3.1 percent tell very different stories about the same month. How the previous reading played out in October is written up in our analysis of US inflation and the core rate.

The rate path: 3.75 to 4.00 percent and two dissenting votes

On October 28 the central bank left its policy rate corridor at 3.75 to 4.00 percent. The weight this time sat in the accompanying detail of the decision: two members of the rate-setting committee voted for a quarter-point increase. Dissenting votes are rare in this committee, and they show what is now being discussed there, namely the opposite of a rate cut.

How likely the December step is, traders read off futures on the US overnight rate. After the October meeting the values sat in a range of roughly 80 to 85 percent, depending on the data source and the cut-off date: the FedWatch indicator of the futures exchange CME came to around 85 percent after 78 percent the day before, a later reading to just under 80 percent, and the prediction market Polymarket to 82 percent. These numbers are market expectations and not commitments; they shift with every data point, and that is exactly why November 10 is a date and not a footnote.

For the European side of the picture: the European Central Bank runs its own rate path, and its dates fall differently. Which data are due there and how Bitcoin has reacted to earlier decisions is collected in our overview of the ECB rate decision and your crypto portfolio.

What moves the October index: energy prices, rents, services

The consumer price index is a basket, and three items inside it almost always decide the direction.

Energy

Energy prices are the most volatile part of the basket and dominated the September figure. They drop out of the core rate, but they still work on the headline rate and on the headline at 2:30 pm.

Rents and housing costs

Housing costs are the heaviest single item in the US index and they move slowly. Because rental contracts run for long periods, today’s market rents only reach the statistics with a delay of many months. This item is the reason the core rate rarely surprises, and why it weighs especially heavily when it does.

Services and second-round effects

Economists use the term second-round effect for the case where a price surge in energy or raw materials travels through wages and transport costs into the prices of services and stays there, long after the original increase is over. That is exactly what the central bank looks at when it decides whether a high reading is an outlier or the start of a trend. For you, this is the item that determines whether an easing in the headline rate is read as an easing in the market at all.

Leverage and liquidation price around 8:30 am New York time

The liquidation price is the price at which an exchange forcibly closes a leveraged position because the collateral deposited is no longer sufficient. This limit applies automatically, and the higher the leverage, the closer it sits to the current price. At ten times leverage, a move of about ten percent against the position is enough.

What comes together in such a moment was on display last Monday: after the security incident at Binance, forced closures added up to around $1.5 billion within a day according to market observers, about $1.3 billion of it on positions betting on rising prices. The figures from different counts diverge here, but the order of magnitude is the same in all of them. A data release with a known time works in a similar way, except that it can be planned for.

From that follows a sober calculation. Anyone who wants to hold a leveraged position beyond November 10 can check beforehand how far their own liquidation price sits from the current price, and how expensive the funding of that position is over ten days. Both numbers are in the position overview of the respective platform. How far the costs for this diverge is shown by our comparison of crypto brokers.

Holding period and tax: a sale before the one-year mark costs the exemption

The German tax rule can make a decision ahead of a data release more expensive than the price loss you are trying to avoid. Under current law, crypto assets count as other economic assets within the meaning of section 23 of the German Income Tax Act: anyone who holds them for longer than a year sells the gain tax-free. Within that year the gain belongs to private disposal transactions and is taxed at the personal income tax rate, with an exemption threshold of 1,000 euros per calendar year.

From this follows a calculation you can run before any reallocation. If your purchase date is less than twelve months ago, a sale on November 9 costs the tax exemption that would have arrived a few weeks later. Against that certain amount stands a possible price loss, which is uncertain. Which of the two weighs more depends on your entry price, your tax rate and the purchase date, and only the purchase date is fixed. The threshold is not an allowance: once it is exceeded, the entire gain is taxable, not only the part above it. Your individual case is settled bindingly by the tax office or a tax adviser.

The economic calendar up to the Fed decision

Up to the December meeting the calendar stays sparse, and that makes the few dates heavier.

• November 10, 8:30 am ET: consumer prices for October. The last inflation reading before the meeting.
• December 8 and 9: meeting of the US central bank, with its own projections for growth, unemployment and interest rates.
• December 10: consumer prices for November. A day after the decision, and therefore without bearing on it.

In between fall labour market data and appearances by individual central bankers. Both can shift expectations, but neither delivers a new consumer price reading. That is why November 10 remains the day worth watching.

US inflation: November 10 decides the December rate

Ten days of lead time are enough to go through the portfolio without time pressure. Three steps that can be worked through before the date:

1. Look up leverage and liquidation price. For every leveraged position, check how far the liquidation price sits from the current price, and what the funding costs up to November 10. How much fees and conditions differ is shown by our comparison of perp DEXs.
2. Set the purchase date against the holding period. List which holdings cross the twelve-month mark before November 10 and which do not. A portfolio tracker takes over this calculation; the selection is in our comparison of crypto tax software.
3. Fix the execution route in advance. If you intend to buy more anyway, settle before the date where you trade and at what fees, instead of deciding that while the market is moving. The terms are in our comparison of crypto exchanges.

(As of October 31, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)