Sources & Methods

Every price in orangeshift is a real, published number. The household the film follows is an example: its balances, contributions and purchase dates are illustrative, and each of them is valued at the real price for its date. This page lists every data series the film uses, who publishes it, and how it was turned into the film's monthly numbers.

Data series

Bitcoin

• Source: Coinbase Exchange, BTC-USD daily candles (open, high, low, close, in U.S. dollars, by UTC day)
• Link: https://exchange.coinbase.com/
• Used for: the Bitcoin price of each film month (the daily close on the 1st), which values the household's Bitcoin and converts every dollar amount into Bitcoin; the household's weekly buys, each priced at that Monday's daily close; and the ten-year price line on the road (weekly closes, 2016-10-19 to 2026-10-19).
• Extremes the film labels are intraday, not closes: the 2017 top, $19,891.99 (2017-12-17); the 2025 top, $126,296 (2025-10-06); the 2026 low, $57,717.55 (2026-07-01). The household's first buy is priced at the 2017 top.

U.S. home prices

• Source: U.S. Federal Housing Finance Agency, House Price Index, purchase-only, United States, not seasonally adjusted (January 1991 = 100), via FRED, series HPIPONM226N
• Link: https://www.fhfa.gov/data/hpi; https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/HPIPONM226N
• Used for: the example home's value: the purchase price times the index's change since the purchase month.

U.S. stocks (the retirement account)

• Source: Kenneth R. French Data Library, Fama/French research factors, monthly. The U.S. stock market's total return, dividends included, is the market excess return plus the one-month Treasury bill rate (Mkt-RF + RF).
• Link: https://mba.tuck.dartmouth.edu/pages/faculty/ken.french/data_library.html
• Used for: the retirement account's growth, compounded month by month.

Consumer prices

• Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U), U.S. city average, all items, not seasonally adjusted (1982–84 = 100), via FRED, series CPIAUCNS
• Link: https://www.bls.gov/cpi/; https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CPIAUCNS
• Used for: the buying power of a dollar (the 1970 annual average against the latest month), the row of shrinking dollar bills, and the household's net worth in 2016 dollars.

Gold

• Source: World Bank, Commodity Price Data (the Pink Sheet), gold, U.S. dollars per troy ounce, monthly average. Licensed under CC BY 4.0.
• Link: https://www.worldbank.org/en/research/commodity-markets
• Used for: the household's four ounces of gold.

U.S. money supply

• Source: Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, M2 money stock, billions of dollars, monthly, seasonally adjusted, via FRED, series M2SL
• Link: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2SL
• Used for: the money-supply figures in the film: about $15.5 trillion in February 2020 and $21.8 trillion in April 2022, up about 40%.

Mortgage rate

• Source: Freddie Mac, Primary Mortgage Market Survey, 30-year fixed rate, June 2019 (3.84% and 3.73% in the weeks of June 20 and June 27)
• Link: https://www.freddiemac.com/pmms
• Used for: the example home's mortgage, at 3.8%.

Methods

Monthly sampling

The film moves one month at a time from October 2016 to October 2026 (121 months). Bitcoin takes the daily close on the 1st of each month (or the next available day). The other series take their published monthly value; the stock index for a month compounds every full month before it.

Estimated months

When a series has not yet been published for a month, the last published value is carried forward. At the time of the film:

• Home prices: August to October 2026 carry the July 2026 index forward.
• Consumer prices: October 2026 carries September 2026 forward; October 2025 is also carried forward, because no index was published for that month.
• Gold: October 2026 carries September 2026 forward.
• Stocks: the index holds flat for October 2026, since September's return is not yet published.

The example household

The household is an example on real prices. Its balances, contributions, home purchase and purchase dates are illustrative, and every price it is valued at is real. It is not anyone's actual accounts and it is not a forecast.

• Net worth = savings + retirement + gold + (home value − mortgage) + Bitcoin, each valued at that month's prices.
• The never-stacker is the same household with the same house, the same savings and the same contributions that never buys Bitcoin. The gap between the two is what the Bitcoin did.
• Starting point (October 2016): $22,000 in savings, $40,000 in a retirement account in U.S. stocks, and four ounces of gold. Each month adds $700 to retirement and $600 to savings ($300 after the home purchase).
• The home: bought in June 2019 for $260,000, with 10% down, 2.5% closing costs, and a 30-year mortgage at 3.8%.

How the household's Bitcoin stacking changed over time

1. December 2017: a single $300 buy from savings, on 2017-12-17 at that day's high of $19,891.99 (0.0151 ₿). Then nothing for more than two years.
2. April 2020: $21 a week from savings, every Monday from 2020-04-06, at that Monday's close.
3. July 2022: the weekly buy rises to $210 a month, still bought weekly.
4. October 2022: $5,000 is moved from the retirement account into Bitcoin, and from then on 10% of the $700 monthly retirement contribution buys Bitcoin.
5. October 2023: another $5,000 is moved from retirement, and the share of the contribution rises to 50%.
6. October 2024: $21,000 is moved from retirement, and the share rises to 90%. From here the weekly buy also buys the dips: twice the usual amount when Bitcoin closes more than 2% below its 7-day average, three times when more than 5% below.
7. January 2026 on: an extra $50 a week while Bitcoin is more than 25% below its high.

In all, $51,790 moves from the retirement account to Bitcoin over the ten years. Each month's value counts the buys made up to that month's valuation date.

• October 2026: the household's net worth is $669,514, the never-stacker's is $634,117, and the gap is +$35,397 (5.6%). Its Bitcoin is 1.52 ₿; 1 ₿ was first reached in October 2024.

What this is not

Educational only, not financial advice. Past prices do not predict future ones.