Analysis
THORChain's Saturday: Almost Two Weeks of Trading in a Single Day
RUNE traded about $31 million on Binance on September 26, nearly as much as in the previous fourteen days combined, and rose 18%. Sunday was almost as busy — but the price stopped going up.
For most of September, THORChain's RUNE was a quiet market. It traded between about $0.48 and $0.53 in the middle of the month, with $1-3 million typically changing hands on Binance each day. It then started to climb, and on Saturday, September 26, it jumped 18.3% on about $31 million of trading. That is roughly thirteen times its daily average over the previous two weeks, and almost equal to those fourteen days put together.
Sunday was the more revealing session. Volume stayed nearly as high, at about $28 million, and the price reached $0.845 at 05:00 UTC, 76% above the September 16 low of $0.479. Then it stalled, and RUNE closed the day at $0.760, down 1.8%. Heavy trading with no further progress usually means new buyers are being met by equally willing sellers. Early on Monday it dipped to $0.709 before recovering to about $0.745.
The timing is part of the story. Crypto trading usually thins out at weekends, which makes a weekend volume spike stand out even more — and means it can fade quickly once weekday traders return. We look at how Saturdays and Sundays change crypto markets in a new guide.