Ether led a Sunday rebound as Kraken spot volume reached $401.2 million

On November 29, 2020, ether led a broad Sunday recovery on Kraken while bitcoin remained the exchange’s largest source of spot turnover. Kraken’s report for the UTC trading day recorded $401.2 million traded across its markets, with ETH gaining 7.2% to a reported $576.48 and XBT gaining 2.6% to $18,194.

The session mattered because it showed two different dimensions of the market at once. Ether delivered the stronger return, but bitcoin continued to dominate liquidity. It was a recovery snapshot after a sharp cryptocurrency sell-off, not evidence that every venue moved by the same amount or that the preceding decline had conclusively ended.

What Kraken’s record establishes

Kraken said the figures came from public market data distributed through its WebSockets API. Returns and total volumes were calculated over the November 29 UTC reporting day. The exchange described the $401.2 million total as unusually large for a Sunday, although it was still more than 50% below the preceding weekly average.

The largest reported asset volumes were $186.0 million for XBT, $73.9 million for ETH and $72.1 million for XRP. Litecoin gained 8.9%, while XRP declined 3.3%. Kusama posted the strongest listed return at 16%, although its reported volume was only $1.01 million. Those figures illustrate why percentage performance and market depth should not be treated as interchangeable measures.

Coinburn calculates that XBT represented approximately 46.4% of Kraken’s reported $401.2 million total, while ETH represented about 18.4%. Together, the two assets accounted for roughly 64.8% of the exchange’s stated turnover. These are rounded calculations from Kraken’s published dollar-equivalent figures, not measurements supplied directly by the exchange and not estimates of global market share.

A rebound, with important boundaries

Contemporaneous reporting on November 29 placed bitcoin above $18,000 after it had fallen toward $16,000 during the November 26 decline. That evidence supports describing the session as a rebound. It does not identify a single cause for the recovery, and the available records do not justify attributing the move solely to institutional demand, Ethereum’s approaching proof-of-stake launch or any individual announcement.

The Kraken data also cannot serve as a universal cryptocurrency close. Digital assets traded continuously across exchanges, and each venue had its own order books, customer base, currency pairs and liquidity conditions. Kraken aggregated activity across crypto and fiat markets denominated in currencies including dollars, euros, yen, Canadian dollars, pounds, Swiss francs and Australian dollars. Its UTC cutoff may differ from candles constructed with another timezone or from prices quoted by a separate index provider.

The report was published on November 30 but explicitly measured November 29 in UTC. That distinction keeps the chronology intact: the completed daily return and volume totals became calculable only after the November 29 measurement window closed.

Later context

CoinGecko’s subsequent November 2020 market report placed the session inside a much larger monthly advance. Its month-end dataset showed bitcoin gaining 42% during November and ether gaining 59%, with ether finishing the month above $600. Because those figures include November 30, they are later context rather than information available during the November 29 session.

The bounded conclusion is therefore straightforward: November 29 produced an ether-led recovery in Kraken’s market, while bitcoin retained the largest share of the venue’s measured activity. The record captures one exchange and one UTC day. It does not establish global turnover, investor identity, trading motivation or the durability of the rebound.