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 look at the performance of our top ten altcoin basket alongside the CoinDesk 5 (CD5) and CoinDesk 20 (CD20) indices, relative to Bitcoin since the May 2025 bottom. Since that low, each has seen a strong rebound, outperforming Bitcoin, with our custom alts basket leading the way with a relative outperformance of over 80%.
This broad strength across the altcoin market coincides with a drop in Bitcoin dominance to the historically crucial 58% level, which often signals a rotation of capital from Bitcoin into altcoins and the potential start of a broader "alt season."
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 look at Hyperliquid's share of centralized perp exchange volumes, with data showing it is broadly gaining ground on all major exchanges. Hyperliquid's weekly volume as a percentage of Bybit's has soared, reaching over 40% at its peak. Hyperliquid is also steadily increasing its share against OKX and Binance, while its gains against the "Other Perp Exchanges" category have recently slowed and diverged.
This divergence is likely driven by the performance of exchanges like Gate, which accounted for >10% of total perp volume in August 2025. This comes at a time when Hyperliquid's weekly perpetual volumes are around $88 billion, falling just shy of its all-time high of $105 billion hit the week prior.
In this week’s COTW we look at the performance of the Corporate Treasury assets (BTC, ETH, SOL, XRP, TAO) against two major indices, CDMEME and CD20 over the past two months. ETH has been the clear outperformer, supplemented by influx in corporate treasury flows. The performance of SOL and XRP closely tracks the broader altcoin market, as reflected by the CD20 index, which includes a significant portion of these same assets.
Given the strong alignment, corporate treasury flows appear to be the clear driver of performance in these top digital assets at the moment, with the CD20 index serving as a strong proxy for this trend.
In this week’s COTW we look at the performance of ETH and its beta plays since June 16th, 2025. Over this period, ETH has outperformed BTC by nearly 70%, but this strength has not carried through to an equal-weighted Meme Index (PEPE, SHIB, SPX, MOG) or DeFi Index (AAVE, MORPHO, LINK, CURVE, UNI), both of which have lagged meaningfully.
This divergence suggests that ETH’s rally has been driven primarily by institutional flows, such as ETF inflows and treasury allocations, which have concentrated demand in ETH itself rather than spilling over into the broader set of ETH-linked tokens.
In this week's Chart of the Week (COTW), we examine the relationship between ETH/BTC open interest (OI) and price ratios. A previous divergence—where the ETH/BTC OI ratio rose without a corresponding increase in the price ratio—appears to have resolved. The ETH/BTC OI ratio has now reached or approached all-time highs, while the ETH/BTC price ratio is simultaneously breaking out and trending upward.
This synchronized movement suggests that ETH's recent appreciation relative to BTC is likely driven by a surge in speculative and derivatives-based capital flows, signaling a shift in the market's underlying dynamics.
In this week’s COTW, we examine the growing divergence between BTC options and futures markets. Despite BTC options open interest (OI) reaching all-time highs in late July 2025, the options OI-to-futures OI ratio has been trending lower since its peak in Q1 2025. This suggests that while demand for BTC options remains strong, futures open interest is growing at an even faster pace — likely driven by renewed directional conviction and increased speculative positioning via futures.
The flattening ratio may also reflect a more balanced and mature derivatives market structure, with greater use of both instruments across institutional strategies.
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