AIER conducted a study in early 2018, comparing Bitcoin to major cryptocurrencies and digital assets including Litecoin, Ripple, Ethereum and Bitcoin. AIER revealed that Bitcoin has been consistently less volatile than the 4 major cryptocurrencies and discovered an interesting trend in the cryptocurrency market. The researchers pointed out that there exists a variety of ways economists measure volatility of a currency or an asset. In its study of cryptocurrencies, AIER researchers utilized a basic method of observing the daily price movement of Bitcoin and other digital assets in the global market.

Economists and statisticians measure a variable’s volatility in many ways. We choose a relatively simple metric: the average daily percentage change in price. We average the absolute value of daily percentage returns for each cryptocurrency and year.
Researchers, AIER

As the daily price movement of Bitcoin (BTC), Litecoin (LTC), Ripple (XRP), and Bitcoin Cash (BCH) were compared since 2013, AIER created a database of averaged daily price movement of every cryptocurrency over the past 5 years. Considering that Bitcoin Cash debuted in late 2017, the price movement of BCH since September of last year was included in the analysis.

Major cryptocurrencies and their volatility rates comparison by AIER

From 2013 until 2018, Bitcoin demonstrated the lowest volatility rate amongst the 4 major cryptos, that have also been less unstable in comparison to small market cap assets and tokens. The claims of most cryptocurrency analysts that the market valuation of the majority of initial coin offering (ICO) tokens and small blockchain projects is mostly ETH have shown the lowest level of volatility and highest level of stability amongst all cryptocurrencies in the market.