PancakeSwap volatility and risk: how violent it has been
2,094 daily moves since 19 Feb 2021. On a typical day CAKE moves 2.2% in one direction or the other; on 1 day in 20 it has lost more than 7.4%, and its deepest fall from a record close was −98%.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 19 May 2021 | −41.9% | $15.67 | +23.2% | −0.2% |
| 11 May 2022 | −26.6% | $4.28 | +0.8% | −1.3% |
| 21 Jun 2021 | −24.4% | $12.09 | +10.1% | +7.1% |
| 10 Oct 2025 | −23.7% | $2.85 | −0.2% | −10.6% |
| 20 Feb 2021 | −22.5% | $14.67 | −27.4% | −25.6% |
| 9 May 2022 | −20.5% | $5.57 | −19.0% | −20.1% |
| 12 May 2021 | −20.4% | $29.30 | −46.5% | −45.5% |
| 9 Dec 2024 | −19.8% | $3.36 | −2.9% | −31.0% |
| 25 Feb 2021 | −17.7% | $11.65 | −0.9% | +48.5% |
| 19 Dec 2024 | −17.6% | $2.31 | +5.6% | +3.8% |
After these 10 falls, CAKE was higher a week later in 4 of 10 cases and higher 30 days later in 3 of 10. 10 hand-picked extremes are an anecdote, not a test. The full count is on the 10% drop in a day study: 36 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 17 Mar 2025 | +41.1% | $2.51 | +4.3% | −28.8% |
| 24 May 2021 | +40.1% | $17.81 | +0.6% | −23.6% |
| 1 Mar 2021 | +39.8% | $13.11 | −9.0% | +37.8% |
| 12 Feb 2025 | +34.9% | $2.65 | +4.2% | −38.6% |
| 12 Oct 2025 | +29.1% | $3.42 | −15.2% | −26.2% |
| 20 May 2021 | +28.8% | $20.18 | −9.7% | −23.8% |
| 5 Nov 2023 | +27.5% | $2.37 | −8.4% | +7.3% |
| 26 Mar 2021 | +24.0% | $14.78 | +15.5% | +104.2% |
| 8 Apr 2021 | +23.1% | $21.10 | +11.5% | +75.5% |
| 4 Nov 2023 | +22.9% | $1.86 | +27.3% | +29.2% |
After these 10 gains, CAKE was higher a week later in 6 of 10 cases and higher 30 days later in 5 of 10. The full count is on the 10% jump in a day study: 41 scored cases, verdict “no better than chance”.
Moves are from one daily close to the next (00:00 UTC), Binance spot. “Open” means that many days have not passed yet.
PancakeSwap and Bitcoin
Over the last 365 days CAKE has moved closely with Bitcoin: the correlation of their daily moves is 0.69, where 1 means in step and 0 means unrelated. For each 1% Bitcoin moved in a day, CAKE moved about 0.99% on average.
| Period | Days | Correlation | Move per 1% of Bitcoin |
|---|---|---|---|
| Last 90 days | 90 | 0.61 | 1.02% |
| Last 365 days | 365 | 0.69 | 0.99% |
| All shared history | 2,094 | 0.61 | 1.14% |
Daily close-to-close moves on the 2,094 days both pairs traded. What CAKE did in the week after a Bitcoin shock is tested separately: after Bitcoin drops 5% in a day.