Currently standing just over 48% at the time of writing, Bitcoin dominance – calculated as Bitcoin’s total market value expressed as a percentage of the total market cap of all crypto-currencies combined – has now reached its highest figure for 2018 so far, according to figures platformed by CoinMarketCap.
At the beginning of May, that same figure sat at just over 35% and, since that period, BTC dominance has been continuing on an unrelenting upward trend, seemingly on course once more to break the highly symbolic 50% mark.
Alt Flight Still Continues
Whilst the trend may indicate relatively good news for HODL’ers of Bitcoin, it appears to represent an almost diametrically opposite trend for holders of altcoins – by definition, the set of all cryptocurrencies minus Bitcoin – particularly those which sit outside the list of top ten cryptocurrencies by market cap.
Collectively, non-top 10 alts have seen their own dominance fall from just under 27% in early May to just over 19.5% currently. The figures appear to support the general observations made in recent weeks of an ongoing alt-coin capital flight into safer Bitcoin territory.
“The Bitcoin dominance metric is becoming a fairly good indicator for identifying bear and bull runs, as opposed to the price of Bitcoin’itself,” states one Reddit user. “And going by that metric, we’re really still very much in a bear market despite Bitcoin’s own recent rally.”
