Week of 27 January 2025: Ether falls 11.23% while Bitcoin drops 4.79%
When both assets fall in the same week but Ether falls more than twice as much as Bitcoin, what does the gap between them show about risk, and what does it leave unexplained?
BTC fell from 102,620.01 to 97,700.59 (-4.79%) and ETH from 3,232.61 to 2,869.68 (-11.23%). Both set their weekly lows in the same hour, 22:00 UTC on Sunday 2 February, and closed in the lower third of their weekly ranges. The ETH/BTC ratio lost 6.76%.
What the data shows. BTC peaked at 106,457.44 at 15:00 UTC on Thursday 30 January, then slid to its low of 96,150.0 late on Sunday. ETH peaked later, at 3,437.31 at 16:00 UTC on Friday 31 January, one hour after its largest single-hour move, 2.28%. Both assets closed in the lower third of their weekly ranges (BTC 15.0, ETH 17.3) and both made their worst day on Sunday 2 February (BTC -2.92%, ETH -7.95%). The ETH/BTC ratio fell 6.76%, so the gap between the two was a relative move, not just a shared fall. Hourly correlation was 0.79. Volume was below its prior twelve-week average for both (0.79 for BTC, 0.94 for ETH). The weekly returns ranked low against history: the 19th percentile for BTC and the 11th for ETH, out of 363 weeks recorded.
What it does not show. The candles say where price went, not why. Nothing here identifies who was selling or whether positions were forced. Volume below average means less changed hands than usual; it does not by itself say whether selling pressure was light or buyers simply stood aside.
What a careful desk would check. Realised volatility (how much prices actually swung over the week, scaled to a yearly figure) was 49.0% for BTC and 68.9% for ETH, and the weekly ranges differed sharply: 10.72% for BTC against 24.96% for ETH. ETH was already 29.78% below its 52-week high, against 9.8% for BTC. A desk sizing both assets the same way would carry roughly the wider ETH swing, and would ask whether its exits could have filled in the Sunday hour when both lows formed.
Ether against Bitcoin. ETH lost 6.44 percentage points more than BTC and fell faster on the worst day. Correlation stayed close (0.79), so the two moved together, but not equally.
What would change this reading
- If a later week trades below this week's low of 96,150.0 for BTC and 2,750.71 for ETH, the Sunday lows were a pause rather than a floor.
- If the ETH/BTC ratio falls further after its 6.76% drop this week, the gap between the two assets is a trend rather than one week of dispersion.
- If correlation rises towards 0.9 while ETH keeps falling faster than BTC, the move is broad but the risk stays concentrated in ETH.
- If volume rises above its prior 12-week average while price makes new lows, the decline is being traded rather than avoided.
Terms
- realised volatility
- how much the price actually swung over the week, expressed as a yearly percentage
- hourly correlation
- how closely two prices moved together hour by hour, from -1 to 1
- ETH/BTC ratio
- the price of Ether expressed in Bitcoin, showing which asset held value better