Spot bitcoin’s historical volatility is analyzed by comparing the current weekday trading session (Sunday at 5:00 p.m. Central Time (CT) to Friday at 4:00 p.m. CT) with the weekend closure interval (Friday at 4:00 p.m. CT to Sunday at 5:00 p.m. CT), a distinction that will cease with the introduction of 24/7 trading. 

To ensure a direct comparison, we use the Parkinson estimator to calculate a standardized daily volatility figure, which involves measuring average hourly high-low price action and scaling the result into a 24-hour daily equivalent. For instance, a volatility reading of 5% indicates that prices moved within a 5% range from high to low over the course of the day. Significant market-moving events have occurred during weekend hours since 2025, highlighting the importance of the transition toward 24/7 trading (Figure 1).

Historically, holding our Cryptocurrency futures and options positions over the weekend has exposed traders to "gap” risk. This price dislocation, defined as the variance between the Friday session close and the Sunday session open, occurs because underlying spot assets continue to trade while the crypto market is paused. A significant example occurred following the announcement of the U.S. Strategic Crypto Reserve on March 2, 2025: as $300 billion in market capitalization was added to spot markets, a $10,000 gap emerged in Bitcoin futures by the time trading resumed. The transition to 24/7 trading will eliminate these discontinuities, ensuring permanent alignment and price discovery between the spot and futures markets.

The mean daily volatility of spot bitcoin peaked in 2021, reaching 5.27% during weekdays and 4.46% on weekends (Figure 3). This was driven largely by COVID-era stimulus and retail participation. Following the shocks in 2022, volatility subsided as the market entered a consolidation phase in 2023, with readings compressing to less than half of 2021 levels. While the 2024 approval of U.S. spot ETFs catalyzed price appreciation, volatility stabilized throughout 2025 as bitcoin’s increasing market capitalization fostered greater liquidity. However, 2026 has seen a resurgence in price action, often centered around weekend developments. Notably, weekend volatility has consistently remained at approximately 75% of weekday levels, confirming that price discovery remains robust even while our markets were closed.

The median daily volatility for spot bitcoin provides a clearer representation of a typical trading day (Figure 4). This is achieved by mitigating the influence of extreme price spikes and statistical outliers. Consequently, these figures are consistently lower than the mean daily volatility previously discussed.

The chart (Figure 5) captures the full range of daily volatility from January 1, 2020, to March 8, 2026. The “X” marks the average daily move, which stands at 3.10% for weekdays and 2.33% for weekends.

The median values are indicated by horizontal lines and show a typical weekday move of 2.66% compared to 1.91% on weekends. For the weekend period, the interquartile range (IQR) spans from 1.21% to 2.91%. This represents the middle 50% of trading days and defines standard volatility by filtering out the most extreme sessions. Notably, even during quieter weekend periods, daily volatility rarely drops below the twenty-fifth percentile mark of 1.21%.

Individual points identify outliers representing extreme sessions triggered by significant market shocks. In particular, the weekend volatility dataset contains multiple outliers exceeding 5.46%, further emphasizing the magnitude of price action that can occur while traditional markets are closed.

The most significant outlier in the dataset occurred on Friday, March 13, 2020, during the initial stages of the pandemic. Bitcoin’s daily volatility reached 36.01% during the Friday weekday session and 17.85% during the Friday weekend interval.

More recently, the highest weekend volatility event took place on October 10, 2025, coinciding with the largest Cryptocurrency futures liquidation on record. As over $19 billion in long positions were liquidated following the Friday close, spot bitcoin daily volatility reached 7.83%. This figure significantly exceeded the 2.14% recorded earlier that day while regulated markets were open. This level of price intensity was more than three times higher than the 2025 weekday average of 2.54%.

The data confirms that the crypto markets remain highly active throughout the weekend. While daily volatility has moderated as the asset class has matured, the persistence of weekend outliers underscores the ongoing requirement for continuous risk management. Historically, weekend market closures have created structural inefficiencies by exposing participants to gap risk. Our transition to 24/7 trading this May will resolve these discrepancies, effectively aligning regulated derivatives with the continuous nature of the spot cryptocurrency market.

The volatility (Vp) for each period is determined using the natural log (ln) of the ratio between the high (Hi) and low (Li) prices:

Vp =√ [ (1 / 4n ln 2) * Σ (ln (Hi / Li))^2 ]

The Parkinson variance was calculated for every hour and these hourly observations were categorized into sessions according to the CME Group schedule:

• Weekday: Sunday 5:00 p.m. CT – Friday 4:00 p.m. CT
• Weekend: Friday 4:00 p.m. CT – Sunday 5:00 p.m. CT

To provide a uniform metric for comparison, the average hourly variance for each session was scaled to a standardised 24-hour daily volatility equivalent.

The whiskers illustrate the range of data considered statistically significant. Any trading day with a Parkinson volatility figure exceeding these boundaries is classified as an outlier.

• Lower whisker: Extends to the minimum value within the dataset that is at least Q1 - (1.5 x IQR)
• Upper whisker: Extends to the highest value that does not exceed Q3 + (1.5 x IQR).

Days falling outside these calculations (typically representing significant news) are plotted as individual points, distinguishing them from standard market conditions.

1. BTC/USD data from Bitstamp
2. See appendix for calculation methodology