Week of 7 April 2025: Bitcoin rises 6.80% while Ether gains 1.07% and lags by 5.73 points
When Bitcoin and Ether rise in the same week but one gains more than six times the other, what does the gap say about direction, and what can it not say about why?
BTC rose from 78,430 to 83,760 (+6.80%) and ETH from 1,580.77 to 1,597.76 (+1.07%); both dipped before recovering. The ETH/BTC ratio fell 5.36%, so BTC outperformed. BTC closed at the 79th percentile of its 373 weekly returns and was still 22.67% below its 52-week high.
What the data shows. Both assets dipped early and finished higher. BTC set its low of 74,508 at 07:00 UTC on Monday 7 April and its high of 86,100 at 01:00 UTC on Sunday 13 April, a range of 15.56%. ETH set its low of 1,385.05 at 01:00 UTC and its high of 1,689.00 at 21:00 UTC, both on Wednesday 9 April, a range of 21.95%. Wednesday was the best day for both (BTC +8.25%, ETH +13.31%) and Thursday the worst (BTC -3.64%, ETH -8.82%). Both closed in the upper third of their weekly ranges. BTC dollar volume reached 24.02 billion, 1.28 times its prior twelve-week average; ETH 11.75 billion, 1.08 times.
What it does not show. Candles record how far and how fast, not why. Nothing here says why ETH lagged or who was trading. The 0.90 hourly correlation shows the two moved closely, but it cannot separate a shift in preference for one asset from differences in leverage or positioning. No open-interest or order-book data is present, so the size of any crowded position cannot be measured. Percentile rank places this week against the past 373 weeks; it says nothing about what comes next.
What a careful desk would check. Realised volatility — how far prices actually swung, scaled to a yearly figure — was 77.3% for BTC and 127.4% for ETH. The largest hourly moves landed in the same hour, starting 17:00 UTC on Wednesday 9 April (5.03% for BTC, 8.67% for ETH). A desk would test whether stops and margin buffers survived that hour. BTC funding averaged 0.0045% per eight hours, peaking at 0.0096%, so longs paid shorts a small sum on average; ETH funding averaged 0.0005%. BTC remained 22.67% below its 52-week high, ETH 60.90% below.
Ether against Bitcoin. The ETH/BTC ratio fell 5.36%: ETH gained 1.07% against BTC's 6.80%, a gap of 5.73 percentage points. ETH's weekly return ranked at the 54th percentile of its 373 weeks, BTC's at the 79th. The four weeks before were mixed for BTC (2.28%, 4.25%, -4.29%, -4.81%; two up, two down) and weaker for ETH (-6.60%, 6.31%, -9.88%, -12.56%; one up, three down). A single positive week does not close a 60.90% gap to the high.
What would change this reading
- If the ETH/BTC ratio keeps falling after a 5.36% weekly drop, the divergence reads as a trend rather than one week's gap.
- If BTC trades below this week's low of 74,508, the Monday-to-Sunday recovery loses its base.
- If ETH recovers while its ratio to BTC stalls near these levels, the lag persists even if both prices rise.
- If BTC funding climbs back towards its weekly high of 0.0096% while price stops advancing, longs are paying more for a position that is no longer rising.
Terms
- ETH/BTC ratio
- the price of one Ether expressed in Bitcoin; it falls when Ether underperforms Bitcoin
- realised volatility
- how much a price actually swung over a period, expressed as a yearly percentage
- percentile
- the share of past weeks with a lower value; the 79th percentile means 79% of past weeks were lower