CoinDesk's weekly ‘Chart of the Week’ highlights topical digital asset developments with vital commentary and analysis.
In this week's COTW, we analyze the price ratio of BTC to SP500 since 2024. On April 22nd, BTC/SPX closed at 17.7, surpassing the previous all-time high of 17.6 recorded on January 21st earlier this year.
The new all-time comes on the heels of a sharp rally in Bitcoin, sparked by renewed optimism following signs of potential de-escalation in the U.S.–China trade tensions.
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.
In this week's COTW, we examine the SOL/ETH and ETH/BTC ratios from 2020. On April 12th, the SOL/ETH ratio closed at 0.0805—the highest daily close since Solana’s token launch—surpassing the previous record of 0.0795 set on January 22nd after President Trump's memecoin launch.
Meanwhile, the ETH/BTC ratio continued to decline, falling to 0.01888, its lowest level since January 2020, underscoring ETH’s relative underperformance compared to other major digital assets in this cycle.
In this week’s Chart of the Week (COTW), we explore Bitcoin’s market cap dominance since the start of 2024. While Bitcoin’s total market capitalization has declined by 26.9% from its mid-January all-time high, now standing at $1.54 trillion, its dominance has climbed to 62.2% — the highest level since February 2021.
This rise in dominance, despite broader market weakness, underscores the significant underperformance of altcoins in recent months and reflects a growing consolidation of capital into Bitcoin amidst the ongoing market correction.
In this week's Chart of the Week, we compare the price performance of Bitcoin, Gold, and the S&P 500 since March 31, 2021. Bitcoin's cumulative returns since Q2 2021 stand at 40.2%, with the asset underperforming compared to Gold's substantial 82.2% gain over the same period.
The S&P 500 has also outpaced Bitcoin with a return of 41.3%. The data shows that Bitcoin has rarely been the leading performer. If you had purchased Bitcoin at the start of Q2 2021, then you would have only outperformed Gold for three of the last 40 months.
In this week’s Chart of the Week, we take a closer look at the ETH/BTC ratio from 2020 to present. On March 14th, the ratio fell to 0.0227, its lowest level since May 2020. While Bitcoin remains steady around $87,000, Ethereum is trading near $2,000—a level not seen since November 2023.
As a widely recognized indicator of altcoin strength, the prolonged downtrend in the ETH/BTC ratio highlights Ether’s underperformance relative to Bitcoin in this cycle.
In this week's Chart of the Week, we examine the open interest for Solana on centralized exchanges in March 2025. Open interest in SOL pairs has fallen 17.3% to $3.03bn month-to-date. On March 17th, the highly-anticipated SOL futures launched on CME—the largest institutional exchange—however, open interest for the asset only reached $7.75 million.
Despite CME's dominance in open interest for Bitcoin (ranked 1st) and Ethereum (ranked 5th) futures markets, it currently sits in 10th place for SOL futures among exchanges tracked by CoinDesk Data.Binance continues to lead the SOL futures market with a commanding 34.2% share of total open interest.
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