Week of 21 December 2020: Bitcoin gains 12.05% and touches 28,422 while Ether trails
When Bitcoin sets a new high for the week on the final day and Ether finishes 4.68 points behind, what can one week of prices say about which asset led, and what remains unknown?
BTC rose from 23,455.54 to 26,281.66 (+12.05%) and reached 28,422 on Sunday 27 December. ETH rose from 638.10 to 685.11 (+7.37%), leaving it 4.68 points behind BTC. Hourly correlation was a loose 0.68 and the ETH/BTC ratio fell 4.18%. Funding stayed positive for both.
What the data shows. BTC set its low of 21,815 on Monday 21 December at 12:00 UTC and its high of 28,422 on Sunday 27 December at 11:00 UTC, so the low came before the high. The full range was 30.29% from low to high. The close of 26,281.66 sat 67.6% up the week's range, in the upper third. Saturday 26 December was the best day (BTC +7.21%), while Monday was the worst (BTC -3.14%). BTC dollar volume reached 16.9bn, or 2.12 times its prior twelve-week average. Ether's low of 551.28 came later, at 22:00 UTC on Wednesday 23 December, and its best day was Sunday 27 December (+7.48%).
What it does not show. Prices record where and when the market moved, not why. Nothing here identifies who was trading or whether either high held after Sunday. The data has no open interest or order book, so the size behind the moves cannot be measured.
What a careful desk would check. BTC's return of 12.05% ranks at the 88th percentile of the 149 weeks of history recorded, while the close sat 5.54% below the 52-week high. A week can be strong in its own right and still sit below the prior peak. BTC realised volatility, the swings actually scaled to a yearly figure, was 88.0%; ETH's was 104.4%. The largest single hour was BTC's -4.33% at 10:00 UTC on Monday 21 December, and ETH's was +5.62% at 14:00 UTC on Sunday 27 December.
Ether against Bitcoin. The ETH/BTC ratio fell 4.18% and the two moved with a loose hourly correlation of 0.68, below 0.7. Their lows fell on different days, so the pairing was not tight despite the same weekly direction.
What would change this reading
- If a later week trades above 28,422, the Sunday high was a step in a continuing rise rather than the week's ceiling.
- If BTC holds above 21,815 while ETH falls below 551.28, the lag in the ETH/BTC ratio deepens into a relative move.
- If hourly correlation rises above 0.7 again, the loose pairing of this week reads as a temporary separation.
- If funding falls below 0.01%, the positive average of 0.0205% for BTC no longer describes the paying side.
Terms
- realised volatility
- how much the price actually swung over the week, expressed as a yearly percentage
- hourly correlation
- how closely two prices moved together hour by hour, from -1 to 1; below 0.7 is loose
- ETH/BTC ratio
- the price of Ether divided by the price of Bitcoin, showing which asset held up better