Bitcoin's dominance on the global cryptocurrency market is charging toward a key milestone, indicating a potential shift in market sentiment favoring the original digital currency.
The metric, which compares the flagship cryptocurrency's market cap to the total value of all cryptocurrencies, has rebounded above 50% and is on track to touch 70%.
Tracing Bitcoin's dominance over the past decade reveals a pattern of resilience against a proliferating field of competing cryptocurrencies, or altcoins.
Bitcoin maintained near-total dominance at around 95% between 2011 and 2013, even as the first wave of altcoins, including Litecoin and Ripple-affiliated XRP, entered the market.
Despite Ethereum's launch in 2015 and a flurry of initial coin offerings (ICOs) in 2017-2018, Bitcoin managed to retain a dominant market position. Even though its dominance dipped to an all-time low of 37% in January 2018 amid the ICO boom, it climbed back to over 50% by the year's end.
Over the years, there has been a significant expansion of decentralized finance (DeFi) and non-fungible tokens (NFTs), mostly built on competing blockchains like Ethereum and Solana. This led to a drop in Bitcoin's dominance to 39% by mid-2021.However, Bitcoin dominance found its footing again around November 2021 and has been on an upward trend since, crossing the 50% mark for the first time since April 2021 as of June 20.
Recent data from CoinGecko shows that Bitcoin is outperforming altcoins on a weekly basis, indicating a resurgence in confidence in Bitcoin. With its market cap reaching $519 billion and a weekly growth rate of 2.8%, Bitcoin stands strong in a market shaken by the volatility of altcoins.
Yuri Molchan
Gamza Khanzadaev
