Week of 8 February 2021: Bitcoin gains 25.21% while Ether trails by 13.48 points
When Bitcoin rises far faster than Ether in a strong week, what does the price record show about where the move came from, and what can it not tell us about who drove it?
BTC rose from 38,795.69 to 48,577.79 (+25.21%) and ETH from 1,611.46 to 1,800.42 (+11.73%), a gap of 13.48 percentage points. Monday 8 February alone gave BTC 19.54%, and the week's return ranked in the 98th percentile of 156 weeks of history. Funding stayed positive throughout, averaging 0.1281% per eight hours for BTC.
What the data shows. The week opened near its floor: BTC's low of 37,988.89 came at 03:00 UTC on Monday 8 February, early in the UTC day, and price reached 49,707.43 on Sunday 14 February. That is a range of 30.85%, and the close of 48,577.79 sat in the upper third of the week range. The largest single hourly move was 9.03%, in the hour starting 12:00 UTC on Monday, the same hour as ETH's largest move (3.04%). Trading was heavy: BTC dollar volume was 1.65 times its prior twelve-week average and ETH's 1.25 times. Realised volatility, the swings actually observed scaled to a yearly figure, reached 107.4% for BTC and 86.1% for ETH.
What it does not show. Price candles record where the market went, not who traded it or why. Nothing here identifies the buyers, the size of any single position, or whether the Sunday high held. The data also cannot say whether the 19.54% Monday came from new demand or from positions closing.
What a careful desk would check. A single day carried most of the week's gain, so a return based on weekly closes hides when the risk was taken. A desk would compare its position sizing with the 9.03% hourly move rather than with the average hour, and would note that BTC finished 1.74% below its 52-week high while ETH sat 3.4% below its own. The four prior BTC weeks ranged from -9.95% to 17.23%, so the path into this week was not smooth.
Ether against Bitcoin. ETH gained less than BTC and the ETH/BTC ratio fell 10.77%. Hourly correlation was 0.72, in the close band, so the two moved together but not tightly. BTC's weekly return ranked at the 98th percentile of 156 weeks while ETH's ranked at the 83rd.
What would change this reading
- If BTC closes a later week above 49,707.43, the Sunday high reads as a pause rather than a ceiling.
- If a later week trades below 37,988.89, the Monday low was not the floor of the move.
- If ETH/BTC keeps falling while correlation stays near 0.72, the gap between the two assets is widening rather than closing.
- If funding stays above 0.0579% per eight hours while price stops rising, long holders keep paying for a position that is no longer moving.
Terms
- realised volatility
- how much the price actually swung over the week, expressed as a yearly percentage
- funding rate
- the regular payment between long and short holders of a perpetual futures contract; positive means longs pay shorts
- percentile
- the share of past weeks with a lower value; the 98th percentile means 98% of past weeks were lower
- hourly correlation
- how closely two prices moved together hour by hour, from -1 to 1