Market Overview - February 2020

Relative Returns

All good things must come to an end! The month of February started off strong, rivaling the price increases of January 2020. However, hopes of the next massive Bull run came to a halt just before February 16th and then “confirmed” on February 19th. Shortly before, Bitcoin prices fell by almost $1000 on some of the exchanges, recording a drop of 7% in mere hours. This was followed by another sharp drop of a bit more than the previous drop on February 19th. Both of these moves were triggered by heavy sell pressure from liquidations originally stemming from BitMex which then moved on to several other exchanges. Most other projects followed the heavy downwards move in even greater fashion. The avalanche of falling prices should not be a new sight for people following the market, however it is also not always a comforting signal. Projects were up as much as almost 60% for ETH at mid month, but then ended up falling into the negatives for all but one.

The end of the month paints a picture previously seen after a sudden price move. The majority of projects are now moving in tandem, with only small percentage gain differences between them. Again the outlier here is Ethereum which had important trading targets hit towards mid February. The bulls were able to fight off the sell pressure much better than the rest of the market. Things might be looking up at Ethereum.

Ethereum was the “star” this month, finishing the month off as the only asset with a positive relative return, with Litecoin being the underperformer, just slightly worse than Stellar.

February 2020, Biggest Changes

10-Hour Rolling Volatility