So I came across something interesting. One of my friends told me that the most influential things on human behavior is sunlight. Which at first makes sense since little exposure to sunshine has been linked to depression.
But what if there was a correlation like that on a global scale?
I did some googling..
Economic recessions in the USA
I dug into this phenomenon, which scientists can track back to the 1600s accurately, and I found that 88% of the recessions back to the mid-1800s (where there is good data) occurred in the downside of these sunspot cycles!
Damn! That couldn’t be a coincidence.
And better, 100%, 11 out of 11 major financial crises, occurred in the downside of this cycle.
Sunspot cycles are simple: sun and energy. The more there is makes people feel better, just like sitting on the beach and soaking it in. The less sun and energy there is, the more depressed people feel.
That’s why, despite other more fundamental cycles, people will be more bullish in a rising sunspot cycle than a declining one. There is literally, on average, 20% more radiation (and rainfall from evaporation) at the top of such cycles than at the bottom.
As You can see by the first graph the recessions (marked in grey) correlate pretty well with the sunspot activity. And as you can see in the second one we're headed for a new bottom in the near future.
What does this mean for cryptocurrencies?
As Bitcoin prices have shown in the past, cryptocurrencies do really well in times of economic instability and government overreach (see for example Argentina), both we can expect in the coming years if the correlation does indeed pan out. The best (and worst) is still ahead of us.
Sources
sunspot activity: https://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/
http://www.astrosurf.com/
Recessions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_recessions_in_the_United_States
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_economic_crises