Analysis
Arbitrum's Second Rally Wave Beat the First on Price but Not on Volume
ARB rose about 149% in a week, gave back 36%, then climbed to a new high of $0.2555 on September 23. Trading activity in the second leg never matched the first, and it has been fading since.
Arbitrum's September looks like two rallies stacked on top of each other. The first began from a low of $0.0831 on August 30 and reached $0.2066 on September 6 — about 149% in a week, with $100 million of ARB changing hands on Binance on the peak day. The token then gave back about 36%, bottoming at $0.1314 on September 15 as daily volume shrank to as little as $9 million.
The second wave started that afternoon. ARB rose 13.5% on September 15, another 25% on September 18, and printed a new high of $0.2555 in the early hours of September 23, about 24% above the first peak. On price, the second wave won.
On participation, it didn't. The busiest day of the second leg traded $94 million, below the first wave's $100 million, even though the price was higher. And since the September 23 high, activity has been drifting down: the last three full sessions averaged about $29 million a day, against roughly $47 million over the four before them, while the price has settled mostly between $0.21 and $0.23.
Fading volume near a high isn't a sell signal by itself; plenty of rallies pause on light trading before the next leg. But a new price high on less volume than the previous one tells you fewer participants are willing to chase it, and that usually makes the next move — in either direction — sharper than the quiet chart suggests. We look at how to measure this properly in a new guide on relative volume, and the full two-wave move is now a Historical Replay scenario.