What’s the best time of the week to buy Bitcoin? the data is in..
A lot of people use the dollar-cost averaging method (or DCA) to buy Bitcoin. This can be done easily by placing a recurring weekly buy on a crypto exchange. The main advantage of the DCA method is that you don’t have to “time the market” (meaning: to guess bottoms and tops).
Say you buy $50 per week of bitcoin (or about $2,600 per year). Buying a little bit every week means that you will not buy at the cheapest or at the highest price, but at an average price over the year.
Best day to DCA in 2021
This begs the question: is there a better day in the week to buy Bitcoin? And by better we mean cheaper. Furthermore, is there a better time during the week to buy Bitcoin? Could it be Wednesday at 3 am, or maybe Friday at 11 pm?
I’ve ran the analysis for the year that just concluded, 2021, and the result is in the graph below. The dark blue bars show the daily averages over 2021, while the lighter and thinner bars show the hourly averages, from Sunday 12 am to Saturday 11 pm.
The answer seems to be clear: Sunday was the cheapest day to buy bitcoin in 2021, while Wednesday was the most expensive. Please note that the times are expressed in the EST time zone (Eastern US). So if you live anywhere else, you have to make the conversion to your local time.
Best time in the week and potential gains
But while the difference might be obvious on the graph, is it really that significant? The data shows that, by buying at the average price of Sundays rather than the average price of Wednesday, you would have gained only 0.5%.
Now, if you look at hourly prices instead of daily averages, you can see that Bitcoin was at its cheapest on Sundays at 9 am, while it was the most expensive on Wednesdays at 11 am.
This time the gain is a little better: buying on Sunday 9 am instead of Wednesday 11 am would result in a 1.4% gain.
While there was, indeed, a best time in the week to DCA Bitcoin, you didn’t miss much even if you chose the worst time. That’s always good to know.
