Week of 24 February 2025: Bitcoin ends down 2.07% after a 23.31% range; Ether falls 10.70%
When Bitcoin recovers most of a wide weekly range while Ether does not, what does the split between the two assets tell us, and what can this data not settle?
BTC went from 96,258 to 94,270 (-2.07%) and ETH from 2,819.70 to 2,518.11 (-10.70%). Both set their weekly highs in Monday's first hour and their lows on Friday 28 February. Volume ran above the prior twelve-week average for both, and the ETH/BTC ratio fell 8.81%.
What the data shows. Both assets set their weekly highs in the first hour of Monday 24 February: BTC at 96,500 and ETH at 2,839.95. Both then set their lows on Friday 28 February, BTC at 78,258.52 (08:00 UTC) and ETH at 2,076.26 (06:00 UTC). The ranges were wide: 23.31% for BTC and 36.78% for ETH, with realised volatility — the size of the swings that actually happened, scaled to a yearly figure — of 76.5% and 118.1%. Sunday 2 March was the best day for both (BTC +9.53%, ETH +13.56%) and also held the week's largest hourly move, 4.31% for BTC and 9.56% for ETH in the hour starting 16:00 UTC. BTC closed at 94,270, at 87.8% of its weekly range; ETH closed at 2,518.11, at 57.9%. Dollar volume was 1.65 times the prior twelve-week average for BTC and 1.28 times for ETH.
What it does not show. The candles record the size of the swings, not their cause, and they do not say who was trading. The Friday lows reversed without anything in this data explaining why, and a strong Sunday does not establish a floor. The week arrived after three down weeks for BTC (-4.79%, -1.27%, -0.36%, then +0.15%) and a mixed record for ETH (-11.23%, -8.45%, +1.30%, +5.95%). BTC's weekly return ranked at the 29th percentile of 367 weeks of history, and ETH's at the 11th, so declines of this size are not rare in the sample.
What a careful desk would check. A close near the top of the range after a 23.31% swing shows a substantial recovery, but the low came only on Friday morning, so exposure carried into that hour was tested by a move far larger than the -2.07% weekly result implies. A desk would compare stop distances and margin buffers with the intraweek path and the 4.31% hour rather than the weekly close, and would ask whether exits could have been filled inside that hour.
Ether against Bitcoin. Hourly correlation was 0.83 — close, but short of lockstep — and the ETH/BTC ratio, the price of Ether measured in Bitcoin, fell 8.81%. ETH lost 8.63 percentage points more than BTC and sits 38.38% below its 52-week high, against 12.97% for BTC. Funding was near flat for both (BTC averaging 0.0031% per eight hours, ETH 0.0034%), so the cost of leverage neither rewarded nor punished either side in a visible way.
What would change this reading
- If BTC trades below the Friday low of 78,258.52 in a later week, the Sunday recovery reads as a pause inside a decline rather than a floor.
- If the ETH/BTC ratio keeps falling after an 8.81% weekly drop, the weakness is increasingly specific to Ether rather than shared with BTC.
- If volume falls back towards its prior twelve-week average while prices hold near 94,270 and 2,518.11, the Friday-to-Sunday reversal has less participation behind it.
- If funding turns clearly negative after averaging near zero, the cost of holding positions has shifted from this week's reading.
Terms
- realised volatility
- how much the price actually swung over a period, expressed as a yearly percentage
- close location
- where the closing price sits within the week's high-to-low range; a high reading means a close near the week's high
- ETH/BTC ratio
- the price of Ether measured in Bitcoin; it falls when Ether underperforms Bitcoin