Bitcoin’s market share reached its highest level since April 2021 as the cryptocurrency’s price continued to climb amid a muted altcoin market.
Bitcoin’s dominance hit a three-and-a-half-year high of 58.77% during late trading on Oct. 15, the same time it hit a 10-week high of $67,800, according to TradingView.
Bitcoin BTC
$66,857 retraced sharply to $64,880 before climbing back to trade just above $67,000 with a market capitalization of $1.32 trillion.
Bitcoin’s increases in dominance have historically been bad news for altcoins, and BTC gained 2.5% on the day while altcoins traded mostly flat or dropped.
Still, some traders think Bitcoin’s dominance will be short-lived and will soon crash, which they claim will open the market for altcoins to rise.
In an Oct. 16 X post, ICT Crypto founder Benjamin Cowen predicted that Bitcoin’s dominance would top out at 60%, while crypto investor Coach K Crypto claimed Bitcoin’s dominance had peaked for this cycle, telling his 129,000 X followers that Bitcoin “needs to rip” before anything else can happen.
“Soon enough, there’s going to be a breakdown in [Bitcoin dominance],” they said. “This will lead to memecoins and other major altcoins getting a taste.”
Analyst Moataz Elsayed said on Oct. 14 that Bitcoin’s dominance “is about to crash hard” and predicted the start of altcoin season.
Ether ETH
$2,602.26 is historically one of the first assets to move when Bitcoin’s dominance declines, but the Ether to Bitcoin ratio, a conversion rate of BTC to ETH, is close to its lowest level since April 2021, falling below 0.039 again this week, according to TradingView.
Since hitting a fresh all-time high of $73,738 in March, Bitcoin has been trading mostly sideways.
But it’s now approaching a key psychological level — its 2021 high of $69,000, which it held for about three years.
Institutional investors are still keen on BTC with the 11 US spot exchange-traded funds seeing net inflows of $371 million for Oct. 15. The products have seen more than $1.1 billion in aggregate inflows over the past three trading days, according to Farside Investors.
