Week of 22 April 2024: Bitcoin falls 2.81% while Ether gains 3.68% in the same week
When Bitcoin and Ether move in opposite directions over one week, how wide was the gap, at what point did it open, and what does the split not tell us about the weeks ahead?
BTC fell from 64,941.15 to 63,118.62 (-2.81%) while ETH rose from 3,147.66 to 3,263.45 (+3.68%), a gap of 6.49 percentage points. The ETH/BTC ratio gained 6.67% despite an hourly correlation of 0.83. Dollar volume on both was below its prior 12-week average (0.59x BTC, 0.63x ETH).
What the data shows. Both assets set their weekly lows in the same hour, 01:00 UTC on Saturday 27 April (BTC 62,391.24, ETH 3,066.74), but their paths around that low differed. BTC reached its weekly high of 67,232.35 late in the UTC day, at 23:00 UTC on Monday 22 April, and spent the rest of the week lower. After the shared low, ETH rallied to a high of 3,357.40 at 18:00 UTC on Sunday 28 April. BTC ended in the lower third of its 7.76% range, ETH in the upper third of its 9.48% range. ETH's largest hourly move (+3.32% at 17:00 UTC on Saturday) came in the late-day stretch with no comparable BTC push. BTC's weekly return ranked at the 25th percentile of the 323 weeks on record; ETH's ranked at the 61st. BTC sat 14.21% below its 52-week high, ETH 19.77% below. Both had closed lower in three of the prior four weeks.
What it does not show. A split in weekly returns does not identify its cause. The data records no flows, no positioning and no news. It also cannot show whether the ETH strength or the BTC weakness persists; the shared Saturday low means part of the week was a single broad move rather than two separate ones.
What a careful desk would check. Volume was thin on both sides: BTC's 11.91 billion in dollar volume was 0.59 times its prior twelve-week average, ETH's 6.94 billion was 0.63 times. Moves made on light volume carry less information about durable positioning than moves made on heavy volume. A desk would also note that realised volatility (the size of the swings that actually happened, scaled to a yearly figure) was higher for ETH at 50.1% than for BTC at 37.7%, and that ETH's weekly range was the wider of the two.
Ether against Bitcoin. The ETH/BTC ratio rose 6.67% while hourly correlation stayed close at 0.83, meaning the assets still tracked each other hour by hour but ETH climbed more. Correlation at this level with a rising ratio usually means a relative shift rather than a full decoupling. Funding stayed mildly positive for both (BTC averaging 0.0032% per eight hours, ETH 0.0045%), so longs paid shorts, but at a small scale that suggests no crowded one-sided bet on this data alone.
What would change this reading
- If the ETH/BTC ratio holds above its week-ago level in later weeks, this week reads as a genuine relative shift rather than a one-week divergence.
- If BTC volume returns towards its prior twelve-week average while price stays below its weekly high of 67,232.35, the low-volume decline gains weight.
- If ETH trades below its weekly low of 3,066.74, the Sunday high of 3,357.40 reads as a short-lived push.
- If funding for either asset rises well above 0.01% per eight hours, the mild long-side payment seen here would need to be revisited as crowding.
Terms
- ETH/BTC ratio
- the price of Ether divided by the price of Bitcoin; it rises when Ether outperforms Bitcoin
- hourly correlation
- how closely two prices moved together hour by hour, from -1 to 1
- realised volatility
- how much the price actually swung over a period, expressed as a yearly percentage