CCData's weekly ‘Chart of the Week’ highlights topical digital asset developments with vital commentary and analysis.
In this week's Chart of the Week, we examine BTC's daily returns so far in 2025. More days have posted positive returns than negative, highlighting Bitcoin’s resilience in the market. Monday has been the strongest day, averaging a 1.55% gain, followed by Friday’s 1.06%, suggesting bullish momentum leading into the weekend. Meanwhile, Sunday (date) recorded the most extreme downside, with an average return of -1.32%, making it the weakest day of the week.
BTC’s price movements have been largely influenced by key announcements from the Trump administration and a series of macroeconomic events, including the release of CPI data as well as the latest FOMC meeting. Despite these mid-week catalysts, Wednesday and Thursday (date) returns remained relatively flat, at 0.12% and 0.11%, respectively.
This week’s Chart of the Week highlights May’s correlation of daily returns between BTC, ETH and the SP500, falling to 15.8% and 18.2%, respectively, the lowest level since August 2022.
Digital assets have benefitted from a significant price appreciation following signs that tight monetary policy and high interest rates may soon reach their peak. This comes after the recent collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, causing a stir in the banking system, and amplifying the interest in digital assets.
The depegging of USDC and regulatory issues with BUSD has led to Binance converting $1 billion of their Industry Recovery Initiative funds to BTC, ETH, and BNB, triggering further buy pressure for digital assets.
This week's Chart of the Week highlights the latest Bitcoin halving and its impact on daily miner revenue.Bitcoin halvings, which happen roughly every four years or every 210,000 blocks, reduce mining block rewards by half — in this case, from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC. This reduction can lead to decreased revenue for miners, assuming transaction fees and the underlying price of Bitcoin remain consistent.While historically rising Bitcoin prices have offset the impact of reduced BTC issuance, transaction fees are expected to become increasingly significant for miners with the rising demand for Bitcoin block space.Shortly after the recent halving, daily transaction fees surged to 1,257 BTC —a dramatic 1,336% increase from the average daily fee of 88 BTC since August. This was primarily driven by the heightened interest in Bitcoin Ordinals and Runes.
For context, since August 2023, there have only been 24 days out of 267 where daily block rewards accounted for less than 80% of total daily mining revenue. The lowest percentage recorded was 24.56% on the day of the halving, when BTC daily transaction fees surged to 1,257 BTC, compared to daily block rewards of 409 BTC.
In this week's Chart of the Week, we explore the cryptocurrency market's response to recent political developments, which have introduced varying levels of volatility as reflected in the open interest figures. Bitcoin, while remaining the dominant digital currency, saw its open interest decrease by 3.6%, dropping from approximately $26.15bn to $25.21bn from the 14th until the 16th of April.
Ethereum experienced a relatively smaller decline in open interest, down by 1.2%. The Altcoin sector displayed more pronounced fluctuations with Solana taking a substantial hit, with open interest plummeting by 14.8%. Overall, these shifts in open interest underscore the sensitivity of cryptocurrency markets to global political dynamics, which tends to act as a reflexive asset class to uncertainty, especially over a weekend when traditional markets are closed.
In this week's Chart of the Week, we explore the ongoing decline of Ethereum (ETH) in value compared to Bitcoin (BTC), which hit its lowest closing price since April 2021 on April 4th 2024. This downward trend highlights the shifting dynamics within the cryptocurrency market, where Bitcoin seems to be strengthening its position as the leading digital asset.
The decline of Ethereum against Bitcoin underscores investor sentiment and market trends that favour Bitcoin's store of value over Ethereum's broader utility at this time. This trend could reflect a variety of factors, including market volatility, shifts in investor strategies, and new developments within the blockchain ecosystem. As the cryptocurrency landscape evolves, it remains to be seen how these trends will unfold and what they will mean for the future of Ethereum and its position relative to Bitcoin.
In this week’s Chart of the Week, we examine the impact of Ethereum’s Dencun upgrade, which launched on March 13 to significantly lower fees for Layer 2 solutions. Platforms such as Arbitrum, Optimism, and Base benefited from marked fee reductions, which in turn has catalysed an upsurge in on-chain activity. Interestingly, while the main focus was on L2 networks, a secondary yet notable effect has been observed on Ethereum's Layer 1 (L1) transaction fees, which have seen a modest decrease since the upgrade.
Prior to the Dencun upgrade, Layer 2 transactions significantly influenced Ethereum's gas fees. The upgrade introduced "Blobs," a new data type that substantially lowered these costs, indirectly reducing Ethereum's overall gas fees. This marks a key advancement in Ethereum's scaling initiatives, setting the stage for further anticipated improvements!
In this week's Chart of the Week, we analyse the liquidity for BTC trading pairs on centralised exchanges since the asset began its uptrend in price. The 1% market depth for BTC trading pairs on centralised exchanges has decreased by 58.4% to 3,793 BTC since 2023.
This trend intensified following the introduction of spot Bitcoin ETFs in the U.S. in early January, with liquidity dipping by 1,171 BTC. The declining liquidity on centralised exchanges, coupled with the increasing demand for the asset as indicated by the rising price action, suggests a potential uptick in volatility. Such conditions often precede large breakout movements in Bitcoin's price, echoing patterns observed in the days following the halving in previous cycles.
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