What is volatility in crypto?
Volatility measures how much a price swings. It is usually quoted as annualized volatility: the standard deviation of daily returns, scaled to a year. A coin with 60% annualized volatility moves much more, up and down, than one with 30%. It describes the size of moves, not their direction.
From the Staxo crypto glossary. The examples use Kraken daily candles (UTC), Oct 10, 2025 to Oct 10, 2026, for the eight coins on Staxo's free plan that are not stablecoins.
How crypto volatility is calculated
Volatility starts with daily returns: how much the closing price changed from one day to the next, in percent. Take the standard deviation of those returns over a period and you get the daily volatility. To make coins and periods comparable, it is scaled to a year by multiplying it by the square root of the number of trading days.
Crypto trades every day, so the factor is the square root of 365 (about 19.1). Stock markets use 252 trading days. For Bitcoin from Oct 10, 2025 to Oct 10, 2026, the standard deviation of daily returns was 2.32%, and 2.32% × 19.1 gives an annualized volatility of 44.3%.
The Staxo coin pages use log returns (the natural log of today's close divided by yesterday's), the usual choice for this calculation. For daily moves of a few percent the result is almost the same as with plain percentage changes.
How volatile were the top coins over the last 12 months?
| Coin | Annualized volatility | Daily standard deviation | Median daily move | Days over 5% | Against Bitcoin |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cardano | 76.2% | 3.99% | 2.38% | 65 | 1.7x |
| Dogecoin | 67.7% | 3.55% | 1.72% | 38 | 1.5x |
| Solana | 65.7% | 3.44% | 1.82% | 43 | 1.5x |
| XRP | 64.9% | 3.40% | 1.63% | 36 | 1.5x |
| Ethereum | 62.1% | 3.25% | 1.60% | 37 | 1.4x |
| BNB | 48.3% | 2.53% | 1.20% | 20 | 1.1x |
| Bitcoin | 44.3% | 2.32% | 1.26% | 17 | 1.0x |
| TRON | 23.7% | 1.24% | 0.66% | 1 | 0.5x |
Cardano swung the most at 76.2%, 1.7 times Bitcoin, and moved more than 5% in a day 65 times. TRON was the calmest at 23.7%, with one day over 5%. Apart from TRON, every coin here was more volatile than Bitcoin.
What volatility does not tell you
Volatility measures the size of moves, not their direction. TRON was the calmest coin and ended the year +2.9%, while Cardano was the most volatile and ended -62.0%. A volatile coin can just as well rise hard. What volatility does tell you is how wide the range of outcomes was.
It also changes over time. Measured over rolling 30-day windows, Bitcoin's annualized volatility ranged from 22.0% to 83.7% within the same year: calm weeks and wild weeks come in clusters, so one yearly number hides both.
And it understates the extremes. If daily returns followed a bell curve, a move larger than three standard deviations would come about once a year. Bitcoin had 3 such days in the 365 days, Cardano 4. Crypto has fat tails, which is why traders pair volatility with a look at the maximum drawdown and the single worst days.
How to practice it in Staxo
Volatility is easiest to understand when you feel it on your own position. In Staxo you start with $500 in demo money, and all eight coins in the table are on the free plan. Buy the same amount, say $100, of Bitcoin and of Cardano, then check both positions in your Portfolio every day for a week: the profit and loss on the second one will swing much more for the same money.
Then size by volatility. A coin that moves twice as much needs about half the position for the same risk, which is what the free position size calculator works out. Staxo Pro adds Bollinger Bands to the chart, which widen and narrow with volatility.
Free on iPhone and Android, $500 in demo money. Also on Google Play.Also on the App Store.
Volatility questions
Why is crypto volatility annualized with 365 days?
Because crypto markets trade every day of the year. Stock volatility is annualized with about 252 trading days, so the same daily volatility gives a lower yearly figure for a stock. Use the same convention when you compare the two.
Which top coin was the most volatile over the last year?
From Oct 10, 2025 to Oct 10, 2026, Cardano had the highest annualized volatility of the eight coins on Staxo's free plan, 76.2%, followed by Dogecoin at 67.7%. TRON was the calmest at 23.7%, and Bitcoin was at 44.3%.
Is high volatility good or bad?
Neither. It means bigger moves in both directions: more room for a trade to work and more room for it to fail. What matters is that your position size and stop-loss fit how much the coin moves, so one bad day cannot do more damage than you planned for.
Try it with $500 in demo money.
Free download, no card. Also on Google Play.Also on the App Store.
Educational content, not investment advice. The examples describe prices from Oct 10, 2025 to Oct 10, 2026 and say nothing about where they go next. Staxo is a simulator: you practice with demo money, never real money.