Week of 1 July 2024: Bitcoin falls 11% and Ether 15% as both close near their lows
When both majors fall double digits on ordinary volume and close near their weekly lows, what do percentiles, volatility and funding say about this week?
BTC fell 11.01% to 55,857.81 and ETH 14.75% to 2,931.00, with both weekly lows at 04:00 UTC on Friday 5 July. Dollar volume stayed near its twelve-week average. The weekly returns ranked at the 9th and 8th percentiles of 333 weeks.
What the data shows. BTC opened the week at 62,772.01 and closed at 55,857.81 (-11.01%); ETH fell from 3,438.16 to 2,931.00 (-14.75%). Both set their weekly low at 04:00 UTC on Friday 5 July, after the worst day on Thursday 4 July (BTC -5.25%, ETH -7.15%). The largest hourly moves were -3.09% for BTC in the hour starting 01:00 UTC on Thursday and -5.35% for ETH in the hour starting 02:00 UTC on Friday, hours before the weekly lows. Saturday 6 July was the best day of the week but returned only +2.83% for BTC and +2.85% for ETH, less than Thursday's loss. The weekly return ranked at the 9th percentile for BTC and the 8th for ETH across 333 weeks, following four prior weeks that were mostly weak for BTC (2.78%, -4.27%, -5.20%, -0.69%). Trading activity was ordinary: BTC dollar volume was 1.05 times its prior twelve-week average and ETH 0.90 times. Both closed near the bottom of their weekly range.
What it does not show. Price records how far and how fast, not why. Nothing here identifies who was selling or whether positions were closed under pressure. Volume near its average does not distinguish broad selling from a thin market. The data contains no open-interest figures, so the size of any leveraged positioning behind the move cannot be measured.
What a careful desk would check. Realised volatility, the size of the swings that actually happened scaled to a yearly figure, reached 57.7% for BTC and 69.7% for ETH. A desk would compare its risk limits and stop distances with these hourly moves rather than with the average week, and would treat 53,485.93 and 2,810.00 as the levels a later week must hold or break to confirm direction.
Ether against Bitcoin. Hourly correlation was 0.88, so the two assets moved together hour by hour. ETH fell 3.74 percentage points more than BTC, and the ETH/BTC ratio dropped 4.20%, making Ether the weaker asset. Funding stayed positive and small (BTC averaged 0.0089% per eight hours, ETH 0.0088%), so longs paid shorts while price fell.
What would change this reading
- If a later week trades below the lows of 53,485.93 for BTC and 2,810.00 for ETH, the Friday low reads as a pause rather than a floor.
- If the following week closes back above this week's open of 62,772.01 while volume stays near its average, the fall reads as a shock that was absorbed.
- If ETH keeps falling faster than BTC and the ratio drops further from its -4.20% move, the broad decline is becoming a relative one, which changes which hedge matters.
- If funding turns negative while price is already 24.08% below its 52-week high, the payment shifts to shorts at a moment when positioning has clearly changed.
Terms
- close location
- where the closing price sits inside the week's high-to-low range, as a percentage; a low figure means the week ended near its bottom
- realised volatility
- how much the price actually swung over a period, expressed as a yearly percentage
- percentile
- how this week's return compares with the 333 prior weeks; the 9th and 8th percentiles mean only a small share of those weeks fell as much