Week of 5 February 2024: Bitcoin gains 13.43% and closes near its 52-week high
When a market rises more than 13% in a week and closes at the top of its range, what do volume, funding and the ETH/BTC ratio add to the reading, and what do they leave uncertain?
BTC rose from 42,582.88 to 48,299.99 (+13.43%), finishing within 0.56% of its 52-week high; ETH gained 9.50% to 2,507.21, sitting 7.34% from its own. Dollar volume was close to normal for BTC (1.04 times the prior twelve weeks) and below normal for ETH (0.86). Funding stayed mildly positive on both.
What the data shows. The week's low arrived within the first hours: BTC's 42,258.10 and ETH's 2,269.11 both came at 01:00 UTC on Monday 5 February, about 0.8% and 0.9% below their respective opens. From there the market climbed steadily. BTC's worst day, 5 February, was still +0.30%, and its best day, 9 February, added 4.07%; the week's largest hourly move, +1.74%, also fell on 9 February, at 02:00 UTC. Both assets set their weekly highs on Sunday 11 February, and BTC closed at 95.4% of its weekly range, ETH at 88.0%. BTC's return ranked at the 91st percentile of the 312 weeks of history recorded before it, after four prior weeks of -5.00%, -0.36%, 1.08% and 1.31%.
What it does not show. Price and volume cannot say whether the rise came from new money or from short positions closing. Volume tells us how much traded, not who traded it or why. The data contains no open-interest figures, so the size of any leveraged position behind the move cannot be measured here.
What a careful desk would check. Dollar volume was 1.04 times the prior twelve-week average for BTC and 0.86 for ETH, so a 13.43% weekly gain did not arrive on unusually heavy turnover. That combination is worth testing in later weeks: gains on ordinary volume can be reversed as easily as they were made. A desk would also note that realised volatility was a moderate 37.0% annualised for BTC, so the week's size came from steady drift rather than violent swings — the largest hourly move was 1.74%.
Ether against Bitcoin. ETH rose 9.50% but lagged BTC by 3.93 percentage points, and the ETH/BTC ratio fell 3.47%. Hourly correlation between the two was 0.79 — positive, but below 1, so their hour-by-hour moves were not identical. BTC finished within 0.56% of its 52-week high while ETH sat 7.34% from its own.
What would change this reading
- If BTC holds above its weekly open of 42,582.88 in later weeks, the close at 95.4% of the range reads as the start of a trend rather than a one-week squeeze.
- If a later week produces the same size gain on volume well above 1.04 times the twelve-week average, the low turnover this week becomes the exception rather than the pattern.
- If the ETH/BTC ratio continues falling by more than 3.47% per week while BTC makes new highs, the lag is becoming a trend of its own and changes which hedge is relevant.
- If funding rises far above this week's 0.0085% average while price stalls, the regular payment from long to short holders becomes a measurable running cost for anyone holding a leveraged long.
Terms
- close location
- where the closing price sits within the week's high-to-low range, as a percentage; a value at the top of the scale means the week closed at its high
- funding rate
- the periodic 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 91st percentile means 91% of prior weeks were lower