Is crypto more volatile on weekends? Bitcoin's record says no
No. Since August 2017, bitcoin has moved less on weekends than on weekdays. On an average Saturday or Sunday its price moved 1.65% from the day before. On an average weekday it moved 2.58%. That is about a third less.
Weekends were quieter in every year from 2017 to 2026. They were also quieter for all 25 coins we track.
What “volatile” means here
Volatility is how big the price moves are, up or down. The direction does not matter, only the size.
An example: bitcoin closes Friday at $100,000 and Saturday at $98,000. Saturday's move is 2%. A 2.58% move, the weekday average, would be $2,580 at that price. A 1.65% move, the weekend average, would be $1,650.
Bitcoin, day by day
“Average move” is how far the closing price moved from the previous day's close, up or down, averaged over every such day since 2017. “Average range” is how far apart the day's highest and lowest prices were. It catches swings that happened during the day and reversed before the close.
| Day | Average move | Average range |
|---|---|---|
| Monday | 2.81% | 5.56% |
| Tuesday | 2.41% | 5.09% |
| Wednesday | 2.55% | 5.41% |
| Thursday | 2.66% | 5.37% |
| Friday | 2.47% | 5.35% |
| Saturday | 1.43% | 3.55% |
| Sunday | 1.87% | 4.18% |
Both measures tell the same story. Within the day, weekend prices also swung less. So the smaller weekend moves are not just weekend swings that cancelled out by the close.
Monday had the largest average move. But it was the busiest day in only 5 of the 10 years, so we would not call that a rule.
Quieter in every year
“Weekend vs weekday” is the weekend average as a share of the weekday average. 74% means the average weekend day moved 74% as much as the average weekday.
| Year | Weekend day | Weekday | Weekend vs weekday |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2017* | 3.30% | 4.48% | 74% |
| 2018 | 2.38% | 3.33% | 71% |
| 2019 | 2.01% | 2.49% | 80% |
| 2020 | 1.87% | 2.66% | 70% |
| 2021 | 2.14% | 3.55% | 60% |
| 2022 | 1.49% | 2.58% | 58% |
| 2023 | 0.85% | 1.82% | 47% |
| 2024 | 1.18% | 2.34% | 50% |
| 2025 | 1.10% | 1.75% | 63% |
| 2026* | 1.06% | 1.84% | 58% |
* 2017 starts on 18 August; 2026 runs to 9 October.
The gap has been wider since 2021. From 2017 to 2020, weekend days moved 70% to 80% as much as weekdays. From 2021 on, the share was 47% to 63%. Saturday was the quietest day of the week in 8 of the 10 years.
Big days happened less often at weekends
Bitcoin moved more than 10% in a day 74 times. Only 8 of those days were a Saturday or a Sunday. Weekends are 29% of all days, so if big days were spread evenly, about 21 would have fallen on a weekend.
Quieter on average is not the same as safe. The largest weekend move was a 13.5% fall on Saturday 30 December 2017. For comparison, the largest move on any day was a 39.5% fall on Thursday 12 March 2020.
The same for all 25 coins
We ran the same check on the 25 coins in the w4rn app, each from the first day in our data (between 2017 and 2021). For every one, the average weekend move was smaller than the average weekday move, and so was the average range.
Bitcoin had the widest gap: its weekend moves were 64% the size of its weekday moves. Ethereum's were 72%, Solana's 76% and Dogecoin's 79%. Filecoin had the narrowest gap, at 88%.
Why weekends are quieter
Less trading happens. On Binance's bitcoin-to-dollar-stablecoin market, the value traded on an average Saturday was 59% of the weekday average, and on an average Sunday 64%.
The likely reasons are outside crypto. Stock markets and banks close at the weekend, and so do the US bitcoin funds (ETFs) that trade on the stock market. Scheduled news that moves markets, such as US jobs figures and Federal Reserve decisions, comes out on weekdays. Our data shows the quieter trading. It cannot show which of these reasons matters most.
You may have read that thin weekend trading makes crypto jumpier. In this record, it did not. Less trading at the weekend came with smaller moves, not bigger ones.
This is a description of the last nine years, not a promise about next weekend. For how bitcoin's swings grow and shrink over months, see volatility regimes explained. For how far it has fallen at its worst, see bitcoin drawdown history.
How we measured it
- Prices: Binance's BTC/USDT pair (USDT is a stablecoin designed to track the US dollar). For each UTC day we have the opening, highest, lowest and closing price. That gives 3,340 daily moves, from 18 August 2017 to 9 October 2026. Each other coin uses its own USDT pair on Binance, from the first day in our data.
- Days are UTC. In New York, a UTC Saturday starts on Friday evening (8 pm in summer, 7 pm in winter). A different time zone would split the weekend slightly differently.
- Daily data only. We can compare days, not hours, so this record can't say which hour of the day is the most volatile.
- Traded value is the number of bitcoin traded times that day's closing price, on this one Binance market. It is not the whole crypto market.
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