The Lab

The levels nearest the price

The four 50x levels from before the statement and at the decision, two on each side, were all missed by less than 0.1%: the day's high stopped just under 82,009, and its low just above 79,604.

The maths, step by step

1. Expected against actual. Adding up the chances gives how many levels the note expected to be touched. For example, two levels at 25% and 75% add up to 1: one touch expected. In one day the note expected 3.9, and 5 were.

The first hour's touch was 81,582, only 0.04% away, which the curve gave just 3.8%: the note's special case, nearer than any level the curve was measured on. The textbook formula expected 1.0 in the first hour, almost all of it from that one level (89%). The four touches between 01:30 and 01:49 put the 6-hour count well above what was expected. Nothing more was touched after that, and by the day's end the count was closer to the curve's 3.9 and the formula's 4.6.

2. How close the chances were. Take each level's chance and what happened (1 if touched, 0 if not). Square the gap and average it: 0 is perfect. This is the Brier score (Glenn Brier, 1950), made for weather forecasts.

• For one day it was 0.13 for our own curve and 0.11 for the textbook formula, the one from Brownian motion.
• For the first hour it was 0.033 against 0.0006, almost all from 81,582.
• Example: the curve gave 81,582 a chance of 3.8%, and it was touched. The gap is 1 − 0.038 = 0.962, and squared it is 0.93. Averaged over the 28 levels, that one level alone makes 0.033. The formula gave it 89%: a gap of 0.11, squared 0.012.
• That first hour shows a known gap in our curve: it was never measured on levels this near. Beyond it, with one result to judge (step 3), the difference between the two scores is within the noise.

3. Why this is about one result, not 28. The levels on one side are nested. Reaching 79,959 means passing 80,771 first. So the whole day comes down to two numbers: how high the price went (+0.5%) and how low (−2.3%). That is one result. One FOMC decision can't show whether the odds are right.

Could more entries have been found?

A turn is a candle whose low is lower than the four candles either side (or whose high is higher), three on the 4-hour chart. We took every turn on the 5-minute, 15-minute, 1-hour and 4-hour charts from the statement candle on: 44, 14, 3 and 1. Each was taken at the moment it could first be known (four candles later, three on the 4-hour chart), not at its exact price. That gave 47 entries after 20:00 with 4 hours left in the day to follow them. Each was followed for 4 hours, against an entry at every 5-minute close in the same hours (241 each way).

The median is the middle value when the results are sorted.

• Longs at turns (23): a median best move of +0.48% and worst of −0.42%. Random entries: +0.46% and −0.39%. No better than random.
• Shorts at turns (24): a median best move of +0.63% and worst of −0.33%. Random shorts: +0.39% and −0.46%. A little better, on a day whose low was 2.3% down and whose high only 0.5% up. One day is not an edge.
• Liquidation levels are not targets. Hitting them is not a plan to trade toward them.

Limits

• One day, one coin; the levels assume isolated margin, a 0.5% maintenance margin and no fees.
• The note used only the clock, not what the Fed decided. Any other news inside the day is mixed into the same move.
• Prices from Bybit's 1-minute candles, with Binance's as a check. Both gave the same counts in every window. Binance's high was 81,954 and its low 79,667.
• Touch times are the opening minute of the first 1-minute candle that reached the level. The day's high and low are given by their 5-minute candle, so the exact minute may be up to four minutes later.
• The 1-week window is scored after 20:00 UTC on 4 November, by the same rules.

Credits

• Glenn W. Brier, "Verification of Forecasts Expressed in Terms of Probability", Monthly Weather Review, 1950: the score in step 2.
• Louis Bachelier, "Théorie de la spéculation", Annales scientifiques de l'École Normale Supérieure, 1900: the first model of prices as Brownian motion, and the chance a price is reached within a given time, which the textbook touch formula comes from.
• The liquidation levels follow the exchanges' published margin rules, simplified (isolated margin, a 0.5% maintenance margin).
• The levels and the curve of touch odds are our own, from our note "Bitcoin around the FOMC decision: where the liquidations sit" and our page "First passage: the chance a price touches a level".
• Data: Bybit's public BTCUSDT perpetual prices (1-minute, and 5-minute to 4-hour for the turns); Binance's public 1-minute BTCUSDT perpetual prices as the check.
• PerpGremlin and Claude, Bitcoin around the FOMC decision: how the levels did, a day later, TerminalGremlin, 2026: the tests, the code and the words.