Week of 20 September 2021: Bitcoin falls 8.64% as Monday's high gives way to Tuesday's low
When a week sets its high in the first hour, drops to a Tuesday low, and recovers part of the fall, what can the path of the week reveal about where the selling concentrated?
BTC fell from 47,241.75 to 43,160.90 (-8.64%) and ETH from 3,328.57 to 3,059.37 (-8.09%). Both set their weekly low at 21:00 UTC on Tuesday 21 September, then posted their best day on Wednesday 22 September (BTC +6.9%, ETH +11.21%). BTC closed mid-range, at 46% of its weekly range.
What the data shows. Both assets set their weekly high in the first hour of Monday 20 September: BTC at 47,347.25 and ETH at 3,347.82. Monday was the worst day for both (BTC -8.95%, ETH -10.55%). The lows arrived in the same hour, Tuesday 21 September at 21:00 UTC: BTC 39,600.00 and ETH 2,652.00, a range from high to low of 19.56% for BTC and 26.24% for ETH. Wednesday 22 September was the best day for both (BTC +6.9%, ETH +11.21%). BTC's largest hourly move came later, -4.87% in the hour starting 09:00 UTC on Friday 24 September; ETH's largest hourly move was +7.00% on Sunday 26 September at 09:00 UTC. The two moved closely hour by hour (correlation 0.93), and ETH finished ahead of BTC by 0.55 percentage points, lifting the ETH/BTC ratio 0.6%. Dollar volume was 1.20 times the prior twelve-week average for both. BTC's weekly return ranked at the 16th percentile of 188 recorded weeks, ETH's at the 19th.
What it does not show. The candles do not say what caused Monday's fall or who sold. Nothing identifies forced selling. The Wednesday rebound does not establish a floor, and the Friday hourly drop shows the week stayed fragile after the low.
What a careful desk would check. Realised volatility, the size of the swings that actually happened scaled to a yearly figure, was 93.2% for BTC and 128.8% for ETH. The close location, where the final price sits within the weekly range, was 46.0% for BTC and 58.5% for ETH, both mid-range after a recovery. The four weeks before were mixed for BTC (-0.96%, 6.13%, -11.07%, 2.64%), so the fall extended an existing back-and-forth rather than reversing a clean trend.
Funding. BTC perpetual funding averaged +0.0065% per eight hours, with a high of 0.01% and a low of -0.0085%; ETH averaged +0.006%, low -0.0112%. Longs paid shorts slightly on average, a small carrying cost on either side.
What would change this reading
- If BTC trades below the Tuesday low of 39,600.00 in a later week, the mid-week recovery reads as a pause rather than a floor.
- If the ETH/BTC ratio gives back its 0.6% weekly gain, the small ETH outperformance was temporary.
- If funding holds near +0.0065% for BTC while price falls again, longs are paying to stay long into weakness.
Terms
- close location
- where the final price of the week sits between the weekly low and high, as a percentage
- realised volatility
- how much the price actually swung over a period, expressed as a yearly percentage
- hourly correlation
- how closely two prices moved together hour by hour, from -1 to 1