Crypto
Bitcoin Traded in a $950 Range on Saturday, One of Its Narrowest Days in a Month
Bitcoin's high on October 17 was $81,770 and its low $80,820, a range of 1.18% and the fourth-smallest full day in the past month. It closed the day at $81,491 and was $81,841 at 05:00 UTC on Sunday, with its share of total crypto market value at 57.4%.
After a week that took bitcoin from $83,773 to a low of $79,800 on Thursday and back above $82,000, Saturday was almost nothing. On Binance's USDT pair the October 17 candle opened at $81,616, traded between $81,770 and $80,820 and closed at $81,491, down 0.15%. The range of $950, or 1.18%, was the fourth-narrowest full day of the past month, behind October 3 (0.69%), October 10 (0.76%) and September 26 (0.81%). Spot volume on the pair was $574 million. Sunday has started the same way: $81,403 to $82,078 in the first five hours, with the price at $81,841 at 05:00 UTC.
The weekly picture is a small loss. From the Sunday October 11 close of $83,773, bitcoin is down 2.3%; from Friday's close of $81,616 it is up 0.3%. The week's lowest point, $79,800 in the hour after Wednesday's hotter-than-expected CPI report had done its damage to stocks, was the first dip below $80,000 in more than three weeks, and it was bought within two hours. US spot ETFs saw net outflows of about $145 million over the five trading days, small against the $7.5 billion they traded.
Ether was weaker. It fell from $2,423.54 on Friday to a Saturday low of $2,356.79 and closed at $2,402.82, down 0.9%, before recovering to $2,417 on Sunday morning. Over the week ether lost 4.7%, from $2,537 on October 11, twice bitcoin's decline, and Saturday's low was its lowest price since October 15's $2,318. Solana finished the weekend's first day at $103.84, having traded as low as $101.25.
Bitcoin's share of the total crypto market value stood at 57.4% on Sunday morning according to CoinPaprika, which put the total at $2.89 trillion. The figure differs between data providers depending on how many tokens they count, so the level matters less than the direction, and the direction over the past week has been toward bitcoin: the tokens that lost most this weekend were mid-sized ones that had rallied hardest, while bitcoin held a range.
A range this narrow is unusual and tends not to last. In the past month, two of the three quieter days were followed by a move of more than 2%: October 3 by a 2.1% rise the next day, October 10 by Monday's 2.3% drop; September 26 was followed two days later by a 1.2% fall. The coming week has Netflix, Tesla and Meta results, flash PMIs and the start of the Fed's silent period; the direction of the next move is not visible in the chart, but the compression usually is.