Crypto Expected Move: How to Estimate Today's Bitcoin Price Range
An expected move is the range a price is likely to stay within over a given period. Options traders derive it from implied volatility; you can also estimate it from recent price history. Either way, it turns a vague question — "how volatile is Bitcoin today?" — into two concrete numbers.
The square-root-of-time rule
If daily moves were independent, the typical move over h days would scale with √h. A range for half a day is therefore about 0.71 of a full-day range, and a 7.5-day range about 2.7 times wider. Real markets cluster volatility, but the rule is a good first approximation.
A worked example
Bitcoin at 84,583 with a 14-day ATR of about 2,340 at 12:00 UTC, half a day before the daily close: 0.81 × 2,340 × √0.5 ≈ 1,340. The expected closing range is roughly 83,240 – 85,920. On our record, a range built this way has contained the close about 8 days out of 10.
What "80%" really means
An 80% range is wrong on purpose about one day in five. A service that never misses is publishing ranges too wide to be useful — or not publishing its misses. Ask for the full record: every day, forecast next to actual. Ours is here.
How traders use it
- Place stop-losses outside the normal daily noise.
- Size leverage so an ordinary day can't liquidate the position.
- Set grid-bot and liquidity-pool bounds around where price is likely to trade.