Not Every Holiday Is Good for Bitcoin and Two Actually Tend to Drag It Down

[nihalsari]

While the overall holiday effect on Bitcoin returns skews positive, two US federal holidays consistently break the pattern. Martin Luther King Jr. Day averages a next-day return of negative 0.84%, a figure heavily influenced by a single catastrophic event: an 18.65% Bitcoin price drop on January 15, 2018, which continues to weigh down the long-term average for that date. Independence Day also averages a negative return of 0.26%, and both holidays post win rates below 50%, meaning Bitcoin is more likely to fall the day after these dates than to rise.

The contrast between the best and worst performing holidays illustrates an important caveat about seasonal trading patterns in crypto. A single extreme event, like the January 2018 crash, can permanently distort a holiday's average return even when every other occurrence was positive or neutral. This makes win rate arguably more useful than average return when evaluating these patterns, since it shows how often the effect actually materialized rather than how large the swings were. For traders looking to act on holiday seasonality, understanding the difference between a genuinely consistent pattern and one distorted by a single outlier year is essential before making any decisions based on historical averages alone.

[etfs]

One 2018 crash still ruining MLK Day statistics six years later