Week of 10 June 2024: Bitcoin falls 4.27% on below-average volume while Ether loses less
Bitcoin and Ether both fell this week on lighter-than-usual trading: was this a meaningful move or a quiet drift, and what does Ether falling less than Bitcoin say about the week?
This matters to a desk sizing crypto risk and a lender setting margins. BTC fell from 69,648.15 to 66,676.87 (-4.27%) and ETH from 3,706.4 to 3,624.41 (-2.21%). BTC dollar volume ran at 0.72 times its prior twelve-week average. Funding, a periodic payment between long and short holders of perpetual futures contracts (futures with no expiry date), held at 0.01% per eight hours all week.
What the data shows. The week opened near its high: BTC's high of 70,195.94 came on Monday 10 June at 15:00 UTC, and ETH's high of 3,713.67 came in the same hour. From there both fell, with a rebound on Wednesday 12 June (BTC's best day, +1.41%), and reached their lows together on Friday 14 June at 18:00 UTC (BTC 65,078.0, ETH 3,362.26). 11 June was the worst day for both (BTC -3.2%, ETH -4.65%). Trading was quiet: BTC's $11.76bn of dollar volume was 0.72 times its prior twelve-week average, and ETH's $7.09bn was 0.75 times. Realised volatility, the size of the swings that actually happened, expressed as a yearly figure, was 39.6% for BTC and 50.9% for ETH.
What it does not show. Light volume does not tell us whether sellers were few or buyers were absent, and the data contains no order-book, open-interest or positioning figures. Funding stayed at 0.01% per eight hours throughout, but without position data it does not show who held what. The week's return ranked at the 21st percentile of the 330 weeks recorded for BTC and the 34th for ETH, so it was a down week, but far from an unusual one. Nothing here indicates what the following week will do.
What a careful desk would check. BTC closed 9.38% below its 52-week high, having risen in three of the prior four weeks (7.79%, 3.37%, 2.78%). The close location, where the final price sat within the week's own low-to-high range, was 31.2% for BTC and 74.6% for ETH. ETH's best day came on 15 June (+2.5%), after the low shared with BTC on Friday. A desk would ask whether the Friday low holds and whether volume returns towards its average before reading this as a change in trend.
Ether against Bitcoin. The two moved closely together (hourly correlation 0.84). ETH fell 2.06 percentage points less than BTC over the week, so the ETH/BTC ratio, Ether's price measured in Bitcoin, rose 2.15%.
What would change this reading
- If a later week trades below the shared Friday low of 65,078.0 for BTC and 3,362.26 for ETH, this would suggest the decline had not finished, though prices alone would not show why.
- If dollar volume returns towards its twelve-week average while price holds inside this week's range, that would be consistent with a pause; if volume stays light while price keeps falling, the move would rest on thin trading, which prices and volume alone cannot explain.
- If the ETH/BTC ratio keeps rising while BTC stays below 69,648.15, this would suggest Ether's smaller losses are more than a one-week pattern.
- If funding stays at 0.01% while price direction changes, funding would add little information about how futures holders are positioned.
Terms
- funding
- a periodic payment between holders of long and short positions in a perpetual futures contract, here quoted per eight hours
- perpetual futures contract
- a futures contract with no expiry date, kept close to the spot price by funding payments
- close location
- where the week's final price sat within that week's own low-to-high range, in percent
- realised volatility
- how much the price actually swung over a period, expressed as a yearly percentage
- ETH/BTC ratio
- the price of one Ether measured in Bitcoin; it rises when Ether does better than Bitcoin
- percentile
- the share of past weeks with a lower value; the 21st percentile means 21% of prior weeks were lower