US M2 Money Supply, explained

FRED series

M2SL

M2 money stock

Frequency

Monthly

adjusted for seasonal swings

Units

USD

published in billions, shown in trillions

Coverage

US only

not global money supply

A running count of the dollars that are readily available for spending in the US economy — not locked away where they can't be spent quickly, not sitting at the Federal Reserve. The Fed publishes it once a month under the name M2SL, in billions of dollars, adjusted to remove the swings that repeat at the same point every year.

On our chart it's shown in trillions so it is easier to read, with a Bitcoin price line on by default so you can compare the two on the same timeline — switch it off in the chart key if you just want the M2 line.

M2 adds together physical cash in circulation, checking account balances, savings deposits, retail money market accounts, and small time deposits. In short: money a household or business could spend or move within days.

What it deliberately excludes matters just as much. The Treasury General Account, reverse repo balances, the Fed's own balance sheet holdings, and institutional money market funds are not counted — they're parked at the Fed or Treasury level, or too slow to turn into spendable cash to count as money actively circulating in the economy. Confusing M2 with the Fed's total balance sheet is one of the more common mistakes in how this indicator gets discussed online.

Directly from FRED — the St. Louis Fed's public data service. We take the M2SL series and plot it as it stands. There is no smoothing, no growth-rate calculation and no risk score of ours mixed into the numbers; what you see on the chart is what the Fed published.

For a figure this widely quoted, the most useful thing we can do is show it cleanly and let you read the trend yourself, rather than layer our own formula on top of it.

The logic is simple even if the details are debated: when the pool of readily-spendable dollars grows, some of that money tends to find its way into investments — shares, commodities, and speculative markets including crypto. When the pool shrinks, that flow reverses and money tends to retreat back toward cash and safer places to park it.

The clearest recent illustration was 2020–2021, when M2 expanded sharply during the pandemic stimulus response, a period that roughly overlapped with Bitcoin's run from single-digit thousands to its cycle high. The Fed's 2022–2023 tightening cycle then flattened and slightly pulled M2 back, overlapping with the crypto bear market that followed. Overlap is not proof of causation — plenty else was happening in both periods — but it's the reason this chart gets watched as closely as it does.

That link between the money supply and asset prices is real, but it isn't automatic, and this page doesn't turn it into a signal. Four things worth keeping in view:

M2 tells you whether the tide is coming in or going out. It doesn't tell you which boats will float highest.

Direction, not level. The absolute dollar figure matters less than whether the line is climbing, flattening, or turning down. A flattening or declining line after a long climb is the signal worth noticing — it marks a shift from expansion toward tightening.

The chart opens on a log scale. That is a scale where equal percentage moves take up equal space. M2 has grown for decades, and this is what lets you compare the size of the 2020 pandemic expansion against earlier decades on the same chart. Switch to the plain scale if you'd rather see the dollar shape instead.

The Bitcoin line is there for comparison. It lets you line up the timing of the two on one chart and see for yourself where they moved together and where they didn't.

US M2 is a background indicator, not a timing tool. It moves once a month and always describes the month before, which makes it no use for calling a short-term buy or sell. Its value is in the slower question: is the pool of money in the system growing or shrinking?

It is US-only, which is why we keep it separate from our Bitcoin vs Global M2 chart, which tracks a worldwide money-supply growth measure and works out its own risk score. And US M2 carries no weight in either Heatmeter, so it feeds no composite cycle score — we treat it as context you read alongside the rest of the board, not as one more vote inside a single number.

Others in macro — Interest rates and the supply of money — the backdrop crypto ultimately trades against.

• Bitcoin vs Global M2Bitcoin against global money-supply growth, the clearest expression of the debasement thesis.
• Fed Balance SheetTotal Federal Reserve assets: expansion and contraction of the system’s base liquidity.
• Federal Funds RateThe policy rate that sets the price of money for everything else.
• 10-Year Treasury YieldThe long end of the curve — the market’s own verdict on growth and inflation.
• Treasury General AccountThe US Treasury’s cash balance, which drains or adds liquidity as it fills and empties.

Every indicator we track — the full glossary.