By
Temitope Olatunji
April 18th, 2024
As for the exact market capitalization, Bitcoin has tanked from over $1 trillion a few weeks ago to around $840 billion.
Bitcoin (BTC), the flagship digital asset of the global cryptocurrency industry is losing its grip on the market as its dominance is weakening. Drawing on data provided by CoinMarketCap, BTC’s dominance is now 39.9% at the time of writing, a dip from a high of 69.71% back in January when the bull run was just picking momentum.
The changes in the global cryptocurrency industry over the past year have been remarkable. New interest was generated from both retail and institutional investors, who notably pumped money into the industry. The interest from the mainstream investors came as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, monetary policies being dished out by central banks that bred inflation, and the perception of digital assets as a viable hedge against inflation.
While Bitcoin served as the reference for the inflow of funds, altcoins also won the hearts of many investors. With the massive buyup of Bitcoin, the prices quickly skyrocketed and attained an all-time high above $62,000. New investors saw Bitcoin as too pricey at this level and rather turned to altcoins with strong fundamentals and a viable use case. This gave birth to the rising price of the altcoins, such as to wrestle the dominance from Bitcoin.
At present, Ethereum (ETH) ranks next after Bitcoin, with a dominance of 19.3% at the time of writing. Other altcoins with a notable upsurge in dominance include Binance Coin (BNB) at 4%, Cardano (ADA) came in at 3.3%, and Elon Musk‘s favorite coin, Dogecoin (DOGE) wields a 3% dominance. For the first time, Bitcoin dominance hit its lowest mark of 33% back in January 2018.
Per the exact market capitalization, Bitcoin has tanked from over $1 trillion a few weeks ago to $843,071,072,876. Ethereum market cap is almost half that of BTC and comes in at $404,613,783,369 while Binance Coin, Cardano, and Dogecoin’s capitalization have dropped to $81 billion, $69.4 billion, and $65 billion respectively.
Bitcoin Market Dominance: What the Future Holds
There is always an upswing in the market dominance of Bitcoin in relation to altcoins and the trend is never constant. That is, Bitcoin dominance over time has neither been perpetually higher or lower and by this, a forecast may be made for the future trend.
There are two imminent eras bound to be ushered in from now. First is a bearish market where the price of all assets tumble as seen following previous bull runs, and also, a journey into an alt season, where alternative digital currencies will see a valuation outperformance. Should the former event occur, Bitcoin’s fundamentals and the favorable sentiments that surround it will help in aiding to maintain a higher dominance over the altcoins. If the former event were to take place, the combined altcoin dominance which is currently pegged at 60.1% will increase in the near future.