Long Saturday, short Sunday

It has long been speculated that cryptocurrency prices are more volatile over the weekend; some people even claim that prices tend to go down more over the weekend than on workdays (a phenomenon known as ‘weekend dip’). The theory is when traditional markets are closed, traders flock to the markets that remain open.

In order to (in)validate these claims, I decided to look at the last ~2.5 years of Bitcoin price data. This time period captures both bull and bear markets so it seems well-suited for this type of analysis. And the trend for Bitcoin will very likely be indicative of the whole market since cryptocurrency prices are highly correlated. The days are defined in the UTC timezone.