CoinDesk's weekly ‘Chart of the Week’ highlights topical digital asset developments with vital commentary and analysis.
In this week's Chart of the Week, we examine Bitcoin's weekly price change in USD over the years. Last week, Bitcoin experienced a sharp decline of $13,586, dropping from a weekly open of $94,381 to a close at $80,795. This marks the largest single-week price drop in Bitcoin's history, surpassing the previous record set in the week ending February 28, 2021, when Bitcoin fell from $57,550 to $45,234.
This significant drawdown underscores Bitcoin's recent volatility, following the week when the cryptocurrency recorded its largest weekly candle recorded its largest weekly candle (HIGH - LOW) ever.
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 Chart of the Week, we take a closer look at the total market capitalisation of digital assets from February 24th to March 4th.On March 2nd, the crypto market experienced a remarkable surge, with its total capitalisation soaring 11.1% to $3.17tn - an impressive daily increase of $317bn in market capitalisation - an all-time high for this metric.
This spike followed U.S. President Donald Trump's announcement of the U.S. Crypto Strategic Reserve, which is set to include altcoins such as SOL, ADA, and XRP.However, the excitement was short-lived as the market swiftly reversed trend the very next day. Concerns over U.S. tariffs and broader macroeconomic uncertainties rattled risk-on assets, causing the total market capitalisation to drop by 10.1% to $2.85tn. This represented a substantial daily drawdown of $319bn, the fourth-largest in history.
On February 21st, Bybit experienced a hack resulting in a loss of $1.5bn, leading to a significant decline in open interest (OI) on the exchange. Since the incident, open interest on Bybit has decreased by approximately $3.8bn. The exchange’s market share of open interest has also fallen from 18.5% to 15.5%, a notable decline from its year-to-date average of 19.21% in 2025.
Bybit CEO Ben Zhou has revealed that around 50% of customer funds were withdrawn from the exchange, yet the decline in open interest appears relatively moderate in comparison. A key factor in this moderation may be the continued operation of the Off-Exchange Settlement (OES) system.
In this week's Chart of the Week, we highlight the best-performing assets within the top 100 by market capitalisation this year. Leading the pack are TEL (+106%) and OM (+93%), with OM benefiting from the growing Real World Assets (RWA) narrative, while TEL’s rally is tied to growing adoption in telecom-focused blockchain services. Exchange tokens have also posted strong gains, reflecting growing optimism around retail trading volumes and declining regulatory pressures on offshore centralised exchanges.
Among the top performers are GT (+34.5%) native token, KCS (+14.8%), KuCoin’s exchange token, and LEO, Bitfinex’s utility token. Within the CoinDesk 20 (CD20), XRP (+24.2%) leads performance, followed by LTC (+21.5%). Both assets are widely seen as frontrunners for the next potential spot ETF approval in the U.S., further fuelling investor interest.
In this week's Chart of the Week, we examine BTC's daily returns so far in 2025. More days have posted positive returns than negative, highlighting Bitcoin’s resilience in the market. Monday has been the strongest day, averaging a 1.55% gain, followed by Friday’s 1.06%, suggesting bullish momentum leading into the weekend. Meanwhile, Sunday recorded the most extreme downside, with an average return of -1.32%, making it the weakest day of the week.
BTC’s price movements have been largely influenced by key announcements from the Trump administration and a series of macroeconomic events, including the release of CPI data as well as the latest FOMC meeting. Despite these mid-week catalysts, Wednesday and Thursday returns remained relatively flat, at 0.12% and 0.11%, respectively.
In this week's COTW, we examine the daily spot trading on centralised exchanges. On February 3rd, spot trading volumes on centralised exchanges reached a new all-time high of $225bn, surpassing the previous high of $222bn recorded on December 5th, 2024. The heightened volume on the spot markets was driven by a sell-off in major digital assets amid escalating trade tensions between the US and its key partners—Mexico, Canada, and China.
Bitcoin retraced to range lows of $91.7k, while altcoins experienced an even steeper decline, with Ethereum declining to levels last seen in August 2024. However, digital assets swiftly rebounded as market sentiment improved following the announcement of a one-month delay in tariff implementation.
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