A measure of Bitcoin’s intraday volatility spiked Monday to its highest levels since crypto exchange FTX’s collapse in 2022, as the asset’s price saw its most intense price swings in around 20 months.
Bitcoin’s so-called high-low spread popped to 19% amid a global market selloff, according to K33 Research analysts Vetle Lunde and David Zimmerman.
“Yesterday’s market activity was frantic and hectic,” they wrote in a research note, describing the activity as “violence.”
FTX’s collapse wreaked havoc on the crypto market well over a year ago, pushing Bitcoin’s price down as low as $15,742 on November 9, 2022, according to CoinGecko. Throughout that day, the asset’s price had hit a high of $18,600 before settling around $16,400 by end-of-day.
The difference between Bitcoin’s highest price and lowest price relative to its closing price Monday resembled the chaos that epitomized crypto headwinds in 2022, the analysts wrote. At the same time, Bitcoin’s brief plunge below $50,000 on Monday saw trading volumes surge.
Totaling $14.5 billion Monday, Bitcoin trading volumes hit their highest levels since early March, when Bitcoin’s price approached a previous all-time high of $69,000. Falling from an all-time high above $73,000 not long after, Bitcoin’s sudden drop in March resembled Monday’s trading activity too.
When Bitcoin’s price closed around $54,000 Monday, its price had fallen 19% relative to $66,700 a week ago. The last time Bitcoin had experienced a similarly severe drop on a weekly basis was when the asset’s price had fallen 13% to $62,000 from around $71,000 in mid-March.
The market-wide pandemonium, which showed signs of cooling Tuesday, was attributed to growing U.S. recession fears and an unwinding carry trade involving the Japanese yen, analysts told Decrypt. Some also cited flaring geopolitical tensions in the Middle East as a risk-off event.
Bitcoin’s price had rebounded Tuesday to $56,400, as of this writing. Compared to Bitcoin’s low price of $49,800 Monday, the bounce-back represented a 13% gain in just over a day.
However, Lunde and Zimmerman wrote that Bitcoin’s price will likely range between $50,000 and $58,000 in the coming weeks. They cited a severe drop in notional open interest on Bitcoin perpetual futures, where traders leveraged long had a substantial amount of bets wiped out.
Notional open interest, which represents the outstanding value of Bitcoin perpetual futures contracts, declined 12% Monday. It was the biggest single-day drop since August 2023, when Bitcoin’s price fell suddenly to $26,000 from $29,000, and notional open interest fell 17%.
Still, the drop in leveraged Bitcoin bets paled in comparison to the implosion of FTX, which eventually led to the conviction of founder and former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried on fraud charges. On Nov. 8, 2022, notional open interest for Bitcoin perpetual futures fell 21%.
“Monday’s market crash was a broad market selloff and not a crypto-specific market reaction,” the K33 analysts wrote. “While cleansing of exuberant longs is a necessary and positive long-term development for the market, mass deleveraging events tend to be followed by stagnant price action.”
Edited by Andrew Hayward