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This tool is for educational and informational purposes only. It does not constitute financial advice, a personal recommendation, or a financial promotion under FSMA 2000. The Rogue Protocol is not authorised or regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. Cryptocurrency investments are high risk. The value of digital assets can fall as well as rise and you may lose some or all of your invested capital. Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results. If you require regulated financial advice, consult an FCA-authorised adviser.

BTC Cherry Picker · Forensic Tool

Pick your dates.
Get the number they
never show you.

Bitcoin analysis lives and dies by narrative. Maxis pick the bottom. Haters pick the top. Both argue in nominal USD — a currency that is itself losing value. This tool applies the mathematics both sides ignore. The nominal return is what they tweet. The real return is what actually happened.

ARK. Fidelity. VanEck. Fundstrat. JPMorgan. Not one Bitcoin price target since 2016 has been stated in real, inflation-adjusted terms. Every number you have ever been given was nominal USD. The measuring stick was moving. Nobody mentioned it.
Date Range Selection
Pick your window. Drag the handles or type a date.
Load a period the analysts reference most:
From each cycle ATH to today — the dates the cherry-pickers never use:
∗ ATH prices shown are confirmed intraday highs from primary exchange data. CoinGecko records daily closing prices — the price shown for these dates in the tool will reflect the daily close, which may differ from the intraday ATH due to exchange spread and the close/open timing. The directional conclusion is the same.
■ Start Date
 
■ End Date
 
Jan 2017 Today
Investment amount $ Adjust to model your position
Deflator
01 · The Narrative
What Bitcoin Twitter argues about
—
Nominal BTC return in USD
BTC at start—
BTC at end—
$10,000 became—
Period—
02 · The Measuring Stick
What nobody adjusts for
—
USD purchasing power lost (CPI)
CPI at start—
CPI at end—
$1 in start-period $—
Annualised rate—
03 · The Mathematics
Inflation-adjusted return
—
Real return · constant purchasing power
$10,000 nominal—
$10,000 real value—
Purchasing power—
Narrative overstatement—
Forensic Verdict
The Analysis
Select a date range above to generate the forensic verdict.
Why This Matters
The argument is almost never about Bitcoin. It is about the denominator.

Every Bitcoin price target ever published — ARK, Fidelity, VanEck, Fundstrat, JPMorgan — has been a nominal USD number. Not one stated a real return. Not one adjusted for the debasement of the measuring stick they were using.

Both sides are arguing about a number that does not mean what they think it means. This is not a minor methodological footnote. It is the structural error at the centre of fifteen years of Bitcoin analysis.

This tool does not tell you whether to buy or sell Bitcoin. It tells you what the number you have been given actually represents — and what it does not.

The Rogue Protocol · Forensic Intelligence · BTC: CoinGecko live · CPI (CPIAUCSL): BLS via FRED · M2 (M2SL): Federal Reserve via FRED
Methodology
The Data

Primary sources. No adjustments. No editorial.

BTC daily closing prices fetched live from CoinGecko — every daily close since 1 January 2017, updated automatically on each page load. CPI data sourced from the US Bureau of Labour Statistics (CPIAUCSL series, index base 1982–84 = 100) via FRED. M2 money stock sourced from the Federal Reserve (M2SL series, billions USD) via FRED.

No smoothing. No editorial selection of which dates to show. Every date in the record is accessible via the date pickers or sliders.

CPI note: Published monthly with ~6 week lag. Last observation: Mar 2026. October 2025 CPI was not published — BLS did not collect survey data due to the US government shutdown (Oct 1–Nov 12, 2025). September 2025 reading (324.245) is used as proxy for October 2025. Source: BLS CPIAUCSL via FRED.

M2 note: Published monthly with ~2 month lag. Last observation: Feb 2026. The Feb 2021 M2 redefinition is incorporated retroactively from May 2020 onward in the FRED M2SL series. For date ranges extending beyond the last M2 observation, the most recent available reading is applied and disclosed in the result. Source: Federal Reserve M2SL via FRED.
The Calculation

The formula the institutions declined to publish.

Nominal return = (BTCend / BTCstart) − 1. This is the number that gets tweeted.

CPI deflator: cumulative inflation = (CPIend / CPIstart) − 1. Measures erosion of purchasing power. Real return (CPI) = ((1 + nominal) / (1 + inflation)) − 1.

M2 deflator: money supply growth = (M2end / M2start) − 1. Measures monetary expansion — how much new money entered the system. Real return (M2) = ((1 + nominal) / (1 + M2 growth)) − 1. This is the number the debasement argument requires but never publishes.

Important: CPI measures price changes. M2 measures money creation. They are related but not identical — the deflators will diverge. Both are presented independently. Neither constitutes investment advice. No adjustment for tax, trading costs, spread, or custody fees. Not FCA regulated.