Week of 29 July 2019: Bitcoin rises 14.54% while Ether gains only 4.83%
When two crypto assets rise in the same week but one gains three times more, what does the data show about that gap, and what can it not say about its cause?
BTC rose from 9,541.54 to 10,929.23 (+14.54%), its high arriving in the final hours of Sunday 4 August. ETH gained only 4.83%, from 211.58 to 221.79, a gap of 9.71 percentage points. Both closed in the upper third of their weekly ranges, but on volume well below the prior 12-week averages.
What the data shows. BTC set its low of 9,395.00 at 09:00 UTC on Monday 29 July and did not look back: the low preceded the high, and the close of 10,929.23 sat 93.3% of the way up the week's range. The best day was Wednesday 31 July (+5.28%), the worst only Monday (-0.36%), so the gain accumulated in steady steps rather than one spike. The largest hourly move was just -1.78% (Friday 16:00 UTC), and realised volatility — how much prices actually swung, scaled to a yearly figure — was 47.6% for BTC and 47.3% for ETH. Both assets still finished far below their 52-week highs: BTC by 21.71%, ETH by 46.18%.
What it does not show. Volume was thin for both: BTC dollar volume of 2.65 billion was 0.68 times its prior 12-week average, and ETH's 0.29 billion was 0.35 times its average. A 14.54% weekly gain on light volume tells us the price moved easily, not whether new buying drove it or sellers simply stepped aside. The data carries no funding figures this week, so no reading of leveraged positioning is possible. It also cannot say whether the late-Sunday BTC high of 11,040.00 held or broke in the days that followed.
What a careful desk would check. The BTC weekly return ranked at the 87th percentile of the 76 weeks on record, but the prior four weeks alternated (+5.09%, -10.83%, +4.08%, -9.90%), two up and two down. A strong week inside a two-sided range is a different signal from one after a sustained climb. A desk would compare the thin volume reading against the size of the gain before treating the move as a durable change in trend.
Ether against Bitcoin. Both moved in the same direction with a close hourly correlation of 0.81, yet the ETH/BTC ratio — the price of one ETH expressed in BTC — fell 8.48%. Bitcoin outperformed Ether by 9.71 percentage points, and the data covers only these two assets, so it cannot show whether other markets rose as well. ETH's own four prior weeks were weaker (three down, one up), and ETH remained 46.18% below its 52-week high against BTC's 21.71%.
What would change this reading
- If a later week trades above BTC's high of 11,040.00 on heavier volume, the thin-volume reading of this week weakens.
- If the ETH/BTC ratio keeps falling after an 8.48% weekly drop, the divergence reads as a trend rather than a one-week rotation.
- If either asset closes a later week below this week's low (9,395.00 for BTC, 204.40 for ETH), the upper-third closes were a pause inside a decline.
Terms
- realised volatility
- how much the price actually swung over a period, scaled to a yearly percentage
- ETH/BTC ratio
- the price of one ether expressed in bitcoin; it falls when ether underperforms bitcoin
- percentile
- the share of past weeks with a lower value; the 87th percentile means 87% of prior weeks were lower