Week of 30 November 2020: Bitcoin rises 6.46% but both assets drop sharply on Tuesday
When both assets rise together but one lags, and longs pay funding all week, how much of the gain was surrendered in a single hour, and what does that say about the move's strength?
BTC rose from 18,185.00 to 19,359.40 (+6.46%) and ETH from 576.32 to 601.54 (+4.38%). Both set weekly highs on Tuesday 1 December at 11:00 UTC and fell hard in the next hour, BTC -4.50% and ETH -6.34%. Funding stayed positive for both, and volume ran above the prior twelve-week average.
What the data shows. BTC rose from 18,185.00 to 19,359.40, a 6.46% weekly return at the 77th percentile of the 146 weeks of history behind it. ETH rose from 576.32 to 601.54 (+4.38%), at the 64th percentile. Both set weekly highs on Tuesday 1 December at 11:00 UTC — BTC 19,888.00, ETH 635.70 — then sold off in the next hour: BTC's largest hourly move was -4.50% starting 12:00 UTC, ETH's -6.34% in the same hour. BTC's low of 18,001.12 came at 13:00 UTC, ETH's 560.00 at 12:00. Weekly ranges were 10.48% and 13.52%. Dollar volume ran 1.64 times the prior twelve-week average for BTC, 1.79 for ETH. BTC closed in the upper third of its range (72%), 1.93% below its 52-week high; ETH closed in the middle third (54.9%), 4.17% below its 52-week high.
What it does not show. The candles record where price travelled, not why. Nothing here identifies who bought or sold, or whether Tuesday's reversal came from one large order or many small ones. Positive funding tells us that long positions in perpetual contracts paid short ones; it does not tell us how large those positions were, and the data carries no open-interest or order-book figures to size any crowding.
What a careful desk would check. Realised volatility — the size of the swings that actually happened, scaled to a yearly figure — reached 71.6% for BTC and 93.0% for ETH. The best day for both was Monday 30 November (BTC +8.31%, ETH +7.00%); BTC's worst was 1 December (-4.73%). A desk would ask whether stops could survive a -4.50% hour, and whether three up weeks before this one (BTC 12.45%, 3.11%, 15.40%) had encouraged positions sized for calmer conditions. Funding adds a running cost: BTC averaged 0.0152% per eight hours, ETH 0.0279%, with highs of 0.0459% and 0.0901%.
Ether against Bitcoin. Hourly correlation was 0.90, very close, yet ETH returned 2.08 percentage points less and the ETH/BTC ratio fell 1.96%. ETH's worst day came later, 4 December (-7.89%), against BTC's 1 December. In this week ETH showed the wider range (13.52% against 10.48%) and the higher realised volatility (93.0% against 71.6%). One week cannot establish whether that spread is persistent; the ratio's decline is the part a desk would watch in later weeks.
What would change this reading
- If the ETH/BTC ratio keeps falling after a 1.96% weekly decline, the lag reads as a trend rather than one week.
- If a later week trades below BTC's 18,001.12 low, Tuesday's reversal becomes the start of a top rather than a pause.
- If funding stays at or above its 0.01% eight-hour minimum while price stalls near 19,359.40, longs keep paying without further progress.
- If BTC closes back above 19,888.00, the weekly high was retested rather than rejected.
Terms
- funding rate
- the periodic payment between long and short holders of a perpetual futures contract; positive means longs pay shorts
- realised volatility
- how much the price actually swung over a period, expressed as a yearly percentage
- percentile
- the share of past weeks with a lower value; the 77th percentile means 77% of prior weeks were lower