Week of 11 March 2024: Bitcoin hits 73,777 then closes lower; Ether falls 6.03%
When an asset prints a fresh weekly high mid-week and then closes below its open, what does the path through the week say that the final price does not?
BTC rose to 73,777 on Thursday but closed at 68,393.48, down 0.82% on the week. ETH fell 6.03% to 3,644.71. Both assets set their weekly lows on Sunday 17 March at 07:00 UTC, after their highs. Volume ran 2.21 times (BTC) and 2.06 times (ETH) the prior twelve-week average.
What the data shows. The week's shape was up first, then down. BTC opened at 68,955.88, reached 73,777 at 07:00 UTC on Thursday 14 March, and then slid to a low of 64,533 on Sunday 17 March — the low came after the high in both assets. The weekly range was 14.32% for BTC and 19.99% for ETH. Saturday 16 March was the worst day for both (BTC -6.04%, ETH -5.85%), while Sunday recovered (BTC +4.74%). The largest hourly move was -3.62% for BTC and -3.39% for ETH, both in the hour starting 02:00 UTC on Friday 15 March. Both closes sat in the middle third of their ranges (BTC 41.8%, ETH 34.1%), not near the lows.
What it does not show. The candles record where price went, not why the mid-week high faded. Nothing here identifies who sold after Thursday or whether the Sunday low is a floor. Positive funding tells us longs paid shorts, but the data has no open-interest or order-book figures, so the size of any crowded long cannot be measured. The 52-week-high gaps (-7.05% for BTC, -10.4% for ETH) describe distance from a peak, not the cause of the retreat.
What a careful desk would check. Realised volatility, the size of the swings that actually happened scaled to a yearly figure, was 73.4% for BTC and 80.0% for ETH, against a prior four weeks for BTC of 7.95%, -0.78%, 22.01% and 9.26%. BTC's weekly return ranked at the 38th percentile of the 317 weeks recorded, ETH's at the 21st. A desk would ask whether stops sized for the calmer weeks would have held through the Friday hour and would count funding — averaging 0.0353% per eight hours for BTC with a high of 0.0784% — as a running cost of any long.
Ether against Bitcoin. The two assets moved closely (hourly correlation 0.93) but not equally: ETH underperformed by 5.21 percentage points, and the ETH/BTC ratio fell 5.25%. ETH peaked earlier, at 4,093.92 on Tuesday 12 March, and never regained it.
What would change this reading
- If BTC trades back above its weekly high of 73,777 in later weeks, the mid-week fade reads as a pause inside a rise rather than a reversal.
- If BTC closes a later week below its Sunday low of 64,533, this week's Thursday high was a turning point rather than a test.
- If the ETH/BTC ratio keeps falling after a 5.25% weekly drop, the weakness is becoming a relative story rather than a broad one.
- If funding stays positive near 0.0353% per eight hours while price sits below the weekly high, longs are paying to hold a position that stopped rising.
Terms
- realised volatility
- how much the price actually swung over a period, expressed as a yearly percentage
- funding rate
- the periodic payment between long and short holders of a perpetual futures contract; positive means longs pay shorts
- close location
- where the closing price fell within the week's high-to-low range, measured as a percentage distance above the week's low