Bitcoin (BTC) traders are changing their habits in 2020, but volatility is still dominated by the start of trading on the New York stock market.
According to the data currently circulating on social media, the volatility of the largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization is highly correlated with the opening of the United States markets.
US Stock Markets Increase BTC Volatility
In comparison, the opening of the London and Asian stock market has a considerably smaller impact on Bitcoin’s volatility.
“Can we just stop $ BTC trading during Asia + Euro hours,” joked leading trader Hsaka, uploading the findings, which relate to the past few days on the US Coinbase exchange.
The BTC / USD chart opens showing volatility in the stock market. Source: Hsaka / Twitter
Other data from chain analyst Skew confirms the trend. Currently around 4pm UTC marks the most intense time of day for Bitcoin trading.
Once again using Coinbase, in addition to Binance, Skew discovers that the weekday is also more intense than the beginning or end of the work week. Weekends, as is often observed, are even quieter.
Bitcoin trading volume 1 month summary. Source: biased
As an example, over the past 30 days, Coinbase saw an average of $ 6.5 million in volume between 3 p.m. and 4 p.m. UTC. The quietest hour, 9 am, saw only $ 2 million.
Those hours correspond to approximately 12 p.m. EST, or 2.5 hours after the New York markets officially open.
The changing face of Bitcoin trading
The data may have uncovered changing trends among Bitcoin merchants, possibly due to the increasing prevalence of institutions in the market.
Last year, Cointelegraph reported on an investigation indicating that at the time, the busiest trading time in volume terms was 1am UTC.
Taken from an average of 2017-2019, the research suggested that at that time, Asian merchants had a noticeable impact.
Since then, the composition of the Bitcoin trading arena has undergone a metamorphosis, with bigger players and more capital coming in. As recently covered by Cointelegraph, Bitcoin derivatives markets continue to set volumes and open interest records in 2020.
