The Market’s First Responder

Happy Bitcoin Friday! — Jun. 13, 2025

The Market’s First Responder

Bitcoin often moves before equities.

Bitcoin doesn’t sleep. It doesn’t take weekends off. It doesn’t wait for the NYSE to open at 9:30 a.m. Eastern.

It trades 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year—and it does so globally. That simple structural fact makes it one of the world’s most responsive financial assets. And increasingly, it’s becoming a leading indicator for risk sentiment across broader markets.

We’ve seen this dynamic play out repeatedly over the past few years. When global uncertainty strikes—whether it’s geopolitical conflict, monetary policy surprises, or major liquidity shocks—Bitcoin often reacts first.

It trades through the night, through wars, through crises. And in doing so, it gives us early signals that traditional equity markets can’t offer until the next morning’s bell.

Take the Russian invasion of Ukraine in early 2022. As tanks rolled across borders, Bitcoin was already moving sharply—hours before equity futures caught up. More recently this week, Israeli strikes on Iran prompted immediate price action in the crypto markets, with Bitcoin front-running the global equity response.

These aren’t isolated events.

They’re a function of Bitcoin’s design: decentralized, permissionless, borderless, and always-on. While equity markets are tied to specific jurisdictions and clocked trading hours, Bitcoin reflects sentiment as it happens. It’s a 24/7 global barometer of risk appetite—and increasingly, of capital flight, inflation hedging, and investor emotion.

None of this is to say that Bitcoin always moves in the “right” direction. But it does move first. That makes it a valuable signal, even for those who don’t hold it.