dYdX volatility and risk: how violent it has been
1,892 daily moves since 9 Sep 2021. On a typical day DYDX moves 3.2% in one direction or the other; on 1 day in 20 it has lost more than 8.9%, and its deepest fall from a record close was −100%.
Volatility is the standard deviation of daily log returns multiplied by the square root of 365, the usual way to put it on a yearly scale. “1 in 20” and “1 in 100” are the 5th and 1st percentiles of all daily moves, read straight from the history with no model.
The 10 largest one-day falls, and what followed
| Day | Move | Close | 7 days later | 30 days later |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10 Oct 2025 | −40.5% | $0.3383 | −3.5% | −3.2% |
| 11 May 2022 | −33.8% | $1.81 | +15.3% | −11.1% |
| 9 May 2022 | −27.3% | $2.84 | −34.4% | −41.9% |
| 12 Apr 2024 | −22.4% | $2.31 | −1.4% | −13.1% |
| 22 Jan 2022 | −22.1% | $6.45 | −5.1% | −17.5% |
| 9 Dec 2024 | −20.1% | $2.12 | −1.1% | −36.4% |
| 1 Jul 2026 | −20.1% | $0.1439 | −1.7% | −21.1% |
| 4 Dec 2021 | −20.0% | $9.86 | −6.2% | −15.7% |
| 10 Sep 2021 | −19.6% | $10.43 | +58.3% | +116.7% |
| 10 Jun 2023 | −18.9% | $1.59 | +7.0% | +16.9% |
After these 10 falls, DYDX was higher a week later in 3 of 10 cases and higher 30 days later in 2 of 10. 10 hand-picked extremes are an anecdote, not a test. The full count is on the 10% drop in a day study: 52 scored cases, verdict “no better than chance”.
The 10 largest one-day gains, and what followed
| Day | Move | Close | 7 days later | 30 days later |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 26 Sep 2021 | +38.1% | $19.31 | +22.2% | −7.6% |
| 20 Oct 2024 | +32.8% | $1.31 | −21.4% | −5.0% |
| 16 Sep 2021 | +32.7% | $15.39 | −8.5% | +45.2% |
| 14 Nov 2023 | +31.3% | $3.94 | −23.3% | −25.3% |
| 10 Nov 2022 | +29.5% | $1.72 | +23.6% | −6.5% |
| 31 Jan 2023 | +29.1% | $3.22 | −2.1% | −5.7% |
| 7 May 2026 | +29.1% | $0.1945 | −19.6% | −31.0% |
| 6 Dec 2024 | +28.9% | $2.32 | −6.9% | −31.3% |
| 20 Jan 2023 | +27.1% | $1.67 | +44.3% | +69.0% |
| 16 Apr 2026 | +27.1% | $0.1295 | +14.5% | +8.6% |
After these 10 gains, DYDX was higher a week later in 4 of 10 cases and higher 30 days later in 3 of 10. The full count is on the 10% jump in a day study: 49 scored cases, verdict “weak evidence”.
Moves are from one daily close to the next (00:00 UTC), Binance spot. “Open” means that many days have not passed yet.
dYdX and Bitcoin
Over the last 365 days DYDX has moved loosely with Bitcoin: the correlation of their daily moves is 0.47, where 1 means in step and 0 means unrelated. For each 1% Bitcoin moved in a day, DYDX moved about 1.04% on average.
| Period | Days | Correlation | Move per 1% of Bitcoin |
|---|---|---|---|
| Last 90 days | 90 | 0.69 | 1.27% |
| Last 365 days | 365 | 0.47 | 1.04% |
| All shared history | 1,892 | 0.54 | 1.20% |
Daily close-to-close moves on the 1,892 days both pairs traded. What DYDX did in the week after a Bitcoin shock is tested separately: after Bitcoin drops 5% in a day.