Politicians, investors, and day-traders are not new to astrology. Trading with the stars might as well be as old as astrology itself. And the practice didn’t fade away with the dawn of modernity or science either, though its prominence largely faded from public acceptance during the age of Enlightenment as esoteric practices became excluded from “rational thought.” The modern astrologer who had arguably the most influence on global life (due to her proximity to power) was Joan Quigley, Nancy and Ronald Reagan’s personal astrologer who advised on various decisions he made as president.¹ We may have seen this policy practice die down in recent decades, but astrology in general is clearly on a continual rise in pop culture—evidenced by the facility and familiarity many people have with knowing the details of their personal natal chart. Astrology is also seeing an uptick in its application to economics—particularly, in the realm of predicting the rise and fall of cryptocurrency value. 

The popularity of cryptocurrency itself has experienced ups and downs since the invention of Bitcoin (BTC) in 2009, but 2021 saw an explosion in public awareness. Early in the year, BTC was climbing exponentially, hitting all-time highs on a monthly basis; the art world was rocked by blockchain technology in the form of NFTs; companies and politicians began accepting BTC as a form of payment;² and, perhaps most remarkably, El Salvador announced that, as of September 7, 2021, it would accept BTC as legal tender. Amid all of this, new altcoins emerged on the crypto trading market, which saw many early investors make life-changing money seemingly overnight. What began as a new form of saving and investing money is now becoming established as a viable escape route from the frightening horrors of global inflation and imminent economic collapse. Particularly for astrologers, this notion tends to go hand in hand with the speculations around the upcoming Pluto Return of the United States.³  

As the stakes grow higher, so too does public curiosity, speculation, and strategic thinking. Behavioral economics and Game Theory suddenly enter the crypto-holding space for the purpose of predicting the value of these volatile assets. At the same time, the social media sphere is seeing its own comparable boom, particularly on TikTok, where the chances of going viral are about as high as the niche-content demands of a creator’s followers.⁴ Astrology TikTok (one of innumerable subsets of TikTok content) is an enormously popular algorithmic channel because it hooks people in just the right way by indulging behavioral analysis—much the same as that usually applied to Game Theory and economics.⁵

Maren Altman is perhaps the most infamous—or at least an “original”—TikTok Astrologer who regularly creates and reads correlative crypto-lunar charts. She rose to the top of many For You Pages during the 2020 election news cycle, when she cross-referenced the candidates’ natal charts with current skies. When the election buzz died down, she began to do the same with BTC. Her readings are surprisingly accurate, and her newest venture into drawing crypto-lunar price charts is providing a remarkable correlation. Following Maren’s lead, several other crypto traders began illustrating their own crypto-lunar charts to track similar cycles. These price charts all tend to say the same thing: BTC hits highs during New Moons and bottoms out on Full Moons.

In October 2021, BTC reached several all-time highs after a relatively devastating summer. After the US Securities and Exchange Commission announced a BTC ETF option on October 18—which essentially allows it to trade like a stock, and on the first day after a Mercury retrograde, no less—the Moon began waning and the price of BTC soared.

The thing about crypto is… it isn’t stocks. Stocks and the trading strategies applied to them typically take into consideration things like how well a company’s services will perform in the “real world” and/or how many people will “buy into” those services. In other words, a stock share’s value is largely contingent on the market success of the company. In contrast, the value of a cryptocurrency coin is contingent on how many people are buying and selling—in other words, human behavior. It makes sense, then, that astrology, which is applied to human behavior, has practical applications to crypto as well. This idea that New Moons correspond to high BTC value and Full Moons to low value is interesting to consider alongside the idea that Full Moons are times when animals (humans included) are particularly hyperactive. At the time of this article’s publishing—three days after the Full Moon Lunar Eclipse—BTC’s value has dropped significantly. This is largely because the SEC rejected an investment firm’s BTC ETF option proposal on November 12.⁶ Mix that in with a frenzied scarcity panic during a supercharged Full Moon, and people are selling en masse. The tides will turn—as they always do with the Moon—and as BTC’s price drops, those who believe in “buying the dip” will help the market correct back up. The next date to watch will be December 3’s New Moon Solar Eclipse.

The planets do not control outcomes. They do not make things happen or cause certain situations to play out over others. Their movements can, however, be traced, and their correlations on Earth are applied to make accurate predictions. For example, the Moon’s relationship to us is used to predict high and low tides as well as optimal times for hunting (see: the Solunar Calendar). A clock on the wall doesn’t determine the time so much as it describes how many hours are left in a day. Simply put, astrology is a science of correlation, not causation. It describes the conditions of a given moment. Through our observation of celestial patterns and future movements, we can predict the future only insofar as we can describe the conditions of that future.