Bitcoin Ended March 1 With Its Biggest Weekly Loss Since November

Bitcoin ended the week on March 1, 2020 with its steepest seven-day decline since November 2019, as coronavirus fears pushed professional traders toward caution before traditional markets reopened. CoinDesk’s March 2 calculation put bitcoin’s seven-day loss through March 1 at 13%. Kraken’s own March 1 market report showed weakness extending across major cryptoassets, making the episode an early, date-specific test of the claim that bitcoin would behave as a haven during a global risk shock.

Kraken marked bitcoin at $8,508, down 1.29% for its March 1 reporting session, on $85.9 million of exchange volume. Ether was $213.80, down 4.27%, on $49.6 million; XRP was $0.2246, down 4.04%, on $7.23 million; and Tezos was $2.61, down 7.77%, on $4.43 million. Kraken reported $174 million traded across all of its markets.

Those are venue-specific observations, not universal cryptocurrency closes. Crypto traded continuously across exchanges and currencies, while Kraken’s surviving page does not state the precise session boundary or calculation formula beside the table. The figures therefore establish conditions on Kraken, not a consolidated global price.

A weekend under risk pressure

The Block reported on March 1 that traders saw increased selling pressure and subdued retail interest before the March 2 opening of conventional markets. Its account connected the caution to the February 24–28 falls in oil, copper and equities and to official Chinese manufacturing data showing a severe contraction. That chronology supports a risk-off interpretation, but it does not prove the coronavirus news was the sole cause of every bitcoin sale.

The market structure mattered. Bitcoin could trade throughout the weekend even while U.S. stock exchanges were closed, so crypto became one of the few continuously visible risk prices before the March 2 equity session. Selling during that interval could reflect crypto-specific positioning, efforts to raise cash, reduced leverage, expectations for other markets or a combination of those forces. The available reports did not provide a complete ledger of trader motives.

The distinction is important because a haven is not defined by a slogan. A credible haven claim would require evidence about performance across repeated stress periods, correlations over declared windows, liquidity under pressure and the currency in which returns are measured. The March 1 record showed bitcoin falling during one acute week; it did not settle bitcoin’s long-term monetary role.

The benchmark context also changed

Bloomberg’s February 2020 factsheet set the Bloomberg Galaxy Crypto Index constituent weights as of March 1. Bitcoin and ether each received the 30% maximum weight, followed by XRP at 18.58%, bitcoin cash at 9.34%, litecoin at 6.63% and EOS at 5.45%.

That benchmark used Bloomberg Crypto Price Fixings and was rebalanced monthly. Its end-of-day levels were based on average Bloomberg Generic prices from 4:00 p.m. to 4:15 p.m. Eastern on index publication days, which were Monday through Friday New York Stock Exchange trading days. The March 1 weights therefore document institutional benchmark composition on the Sunday date, but the index did not supply a Sunday closing level comparable to Kraken’s continuous-market report.

The capped weights also show why “the crypto market” could not be reduced to bitcoin alone. Kraken’s March 1 table recorded larger daily percentage losses for ether, XRP and Tezos than for bitcoin, while the Bloomberg benchmark assigned substantial weight to multiple assets. Broad risk pressure and asset-specific moves coexisted.

What March 1 established

The strongest verifiable conclusion is narrow: by March 1, 2020, bitcoin had completed a 13% losing week, its worst since November 2019, while a major exchange reported declines across several leading assets and traders described defensive positioning before the conventional-market open.

It would be an overreach to call that week definitive proof that bitcoin could never function as a haven. The March 1 evidence instead captured an early warning: during the first coronavirus-driven global selloff, crypto was trading as part of the risk and liquidity conversation, not demonstrably outside it.