Explaining Crypto’s Volatility

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2 Apr 2024
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You can get what is volatility and how work? So lets start. (This article credited from Forbes Dec 2021)
So you want to get volatile?
Cryptocurrency is a rapidly-growing market. This is not breaking news. I’m sure you know both sides of the coin (so to speak): crypto has made queens—and paupers. But those wins and losses don’t necessarily come from winners picking good coins and losers picking bad ones. It’s possible to talk to two people who have both invested in Dogecoin, but one lost money and the other gained a profit. Whether you win or lose can depend largely on timing. This is because cryptocurrency is an incredibly topsy-turvy investment; all cryptocurrencies experience huge fluctuations in their valuation—a quality known on Wall Street as volatility. Cryptocurrency is an incredibly volatile investment. In one day, Bitcoin’s value dropped 30%. But, why?
This question brings up something that we often forget with cryptocurrency: it isn’t intrinsically valuable. There isn’t gold or diamonds or anything backing up crypto’s value. At no point did the U.S. Treasury say, “Yes, any time someone wants to bring us Bitcoin, we will give them X number of dollar bills from our reserves.” Not all die-hard crypto fans would agree, but there is an argument that crypto’s value really only comes from how much people are willing to trade for it—in goods, other cryptocurrencies, or in dollars.

Let’s unpack this.

There are investors who are interested in crypto not to use it as a currency, but to use it as a hedge against inflation, or as an investment vehicle. But without anything intrinsically valuable backing up the currency, crypto’s market value is based entirely on speculation, which is essentially educated guesswork.
Investing in something that is speculative is a guaranteed way to introduce volatility in your portfolio. It means the investment’s value isn’t very grounded, which makes its price incredibly sensitive to even slight changes in investors’ expectations or perceptions.
Investing in speculative assets is essentially like a hot air balloon ride: you might enjoy the view from the top, but once you realize you’re only suspended by hot air, you’ll wish you could get off the ride without falling. Unfortunately, in the case of speculation, oftentimes what goes up, must come down.
For example, Vox cites a fascinating graphic on “The Musk Effect,” or the phenomenon of how strongly the value of Bitcoin is affected by Elon Musk’s tweets. If it makes you nervous that one person’s Twitter account has a huge influence over the value of your investments, good. It should. Having the value of your investments be at the whim of one person’s fickle opinion sounds like a huge risk to me.
Another example:

The Ethereum Volatility Index

Ethereum Volatility Time Series


Frequently Asked Questions

What is The Ethereum Volatility Index?

This site tracks the volatility of the Ethereum price in US dollars.

What is volatility?

Volatility is a measure of how much the price of a financial asset varies over time.

Why is volatility important?

Volatility means that an asset is risky to hold—on any given day, its value may go up or down substantially. The more volatile an asset, the more people will want to limit their exposure to it, either by simply not holding it or by hedging. Volatility also increases the cost of hedging, which is a major contributor to the price of merchant services. If Ethereum volatility decreases, the cost of converting into and out of Ethereum will decrease as well.


What definition of volatility does The Ethereum Volatility Index use?

The standard deviation of daily returns for the preceding 30- and 60-day windows. These are measures of historical volatility(1) based on past Ethereum prices. When the Ethereum options market matures, it will be possible to calculate Ethereum's implied volatility(2), which is in many ways a better measure.

How volatile is Ethereum relative to gold> and other currencies?

For comparison, the volatility of gold averages around 1.2%, while other major currencies average between 0.5% and 1.0%.
The chart above shows the volatility of gold and several other currencies against the US Dollar. Series marked with an asterisk are not directly comparable to series not so marked because fiat currency markets are closed on weekends and holidays, and therefore some price changes reflect multiple-day changes. Such multi-day changes in price are excluded from analysis, and therefore, the 30- and 60-day metrics for these series use fewer than 30 and 60 data points. They are presented for entertainment purposes only.


Do you have pages for other currencies?

Yes! You can check out our Bitcoin Volatility Index. We are working on more soon!

Why is Ethereum more volatile than Bitcoin and Litecoin?

Bitcoin launched in 2009, while Litecoin was released in 2011. Ethereum was only launched in 2014(3), meaning it is 5 years younger than Bitcoin and 3 years younger than Litecoin. Ethereum's markets are very liquid, but it appears price discovery is happening very quickly with Ethereum since it is just establishing its price.

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