Week of 1 April 2024: both assets fall from their opening highs, and Ether falls further
When a week starts at its high and both assets fall, what does the gap between Bitcoin's and Ether's losses say about where weakness was concentrated, and what does the price data leave unanswered?
BTC fell from 71,280.0 to 69,360.39 (-2.69%) and ETH from 3,645.29 to 3,454.2 (-5.24%). Both weekly highs came in the first hour on Monday 1 April and both lows at 00:00 UTC on Wednesday 3 April. ETH underperformed BTC by 2.55 percentage points and the ETH/BTC ratio fell 2.62%. Funding stayed positive all week.
What the data shows. Both markets set their weekly highs in the first hour of Monday 1 April: 71,288.23 for BTC and 3,645.95 for ETH. Both lows came at 00:00 UTC on Wednesday 3 April, at 64,493.07 and 3,202.79, giving a range of 10.54% for BTC and 13.84% for ETH. The worst day was Tuesday 2 April, with BTC down 6.01% and ETH down 6.42%, and the largest single hourly move landed at 02:00 UTC that day (-3.45% for BTC, -3.64% for ETH). BTC then recovered enough to close in the upper third of its week range, at 71.6% of the range; ETH closed at 56.7%, in the middle third. BTC dollar volume was 18.48 bn, about equal to its prior twelve-week average, while ETH volume of 8.51 bn was below its average. Each week's return sat low against history: the 26th percentile for BTC and the 24th for ETH, from 320 weeks of data.
What it does not show. Candles record price, not cause. Nothing here explains the Tuesday decline or identifies who traded it. The data also cannot say whether the Wednesday low was final. The recovery days differ, with BTC's best day on 2024-04-04 and ETH's on 2024-04-07, but the input links them to nothing.
What a careful desk would check. Realised volatility, actual swings scaled to a yearly figure, was 51.8% for BTC and 58.9% for ETH. At the close, BTC sat 5.73% below its 52-week high and ETH 15.08% below, so a position hedged on BTC alone may not cover ETH's larger fall. The ETH/BTC ratio change of -2.62% is the measure a relative desk would track.
Funding. BTC perpetual funding, the periodic payment between long and short holders, averaged 0.0152% per eight hours and stayed between 0.01% and 0.0702%; ETH averaged 0.0148%. Long holders paid throughout a week when both prices fell.
What would change this reading
- If ETH falls faster than BTC again in a later week, the divergence of this week reads as a trend rather than a single week's gap.
- If BTC closes a later week below this week's low of 64,493.07, the Wednesday low was a pause rather than support.
- If funding stays positive while both prices keep falling, long holders keep paying for exposure that is not working.
- If ETH recovers to close in the upper third of a later week's range, the middle-third close here reads as weakness that was repaired.
Terms
- realised volatility
- how much the price actually swung over the week, expressed as a yearly percentage
- perpetual funding
- a regular payment between long and short holders of a perpetual futures contract; positive means longs pay shorts
- 52-week high
- the highest price reached in the previous 52 weeks