Chasing candles: Here’s where Bitcoin’s ‘Tesla pump’ ranks in history

Bitcoin set a new price record on Monday, and crypto traders quickly marked an auxiliary milestone to the rally: BTC’s “biggest” candle in history.

By raw dollar value, February 8 was indeed Bitcoin’s largest daily range in recorded history — surpassing January 11’s candle by 12%.

But valuing Bitcoin candles in US dollars is almost pointless. Bitcoin is worth more US dollars than ever, so its daily trading range should also be larger.

It’s much more useful to analyze Bitcoin’s daily trading ranges (candles) as a percentage of its opening price.

Daily Bitcoin candles

Below, the chart sorts Bitcoin’s daily candles into years. Bigger circles represent bigger rallies, and warmer colors show larger USD ranges.

Protos found 62 daily Bitcoin candles bigger than yesterday’s, most of them between 2013 and 2015.

On Feb 8 2021, Bitcoin traded within a $8,719 range on Bitfinex — a 22.4% candle.
Bitcoin traded similarly on 29 Jan 2021 (one week ago), when it recorded a 20% candle.
10 Apr 2013 was Bitcoin’s largest daily candle — BTC traded between $19.90 and $290 (a 115% range) according to TradingView.

For scale, it’s worth noting that two daily candles from 2020 were twice the size as yesterday’s Tesla-inspired rally.

They occurred on March 12 and 13 during Bitcoin’s recovery from COVID-inspired market turmoil.

Now do weekly

After zooming out, we found last week (26.6%) wasn’t even Bitcoin’s biggest weekly candle this year.

BTC actually recorded a larger weekly candle in January, both in terms of percentage and US dollar value.

Bitcoin traded between $28,540 and $41,969 in the week ending January 4.
This represents a 41% trading range and a candle worth over $13,000.
Bitcoin’s recorded 73 larger weekly candles in its history since 2013.

Zooming in to hourly candles: Yesterday, Bitcoin recorded an 11% candle on Bitfinex between 12:00 and 13:00 UTC.

This was the cryptocurrency’s 23rd largest candle since 2018 (as far back as TradingView serves hourly data).

A bigger hourly candle was again recorded on Jan 29 2021, when BTC fluctuated 14% between 08:00 and 09:00 UTC on Bitfinex.