- Bitcoin is losing market dominance as its market cap continues to shrink.
- At the same time, numerous altcoins experienced large gains, especially last week.
- While the current development goes against expectations, it might indicate that the altseason is arriving.
Bitcoin dominance is dropping further down, not unlike the coin’s price. In the last 24 hours, BTC dropped by another 1.98%, which brought its price to $6.727 at the time of writing.
Bitcoin dominance drops, while altcoin prices surge
The dominance itself sits at 64.2%, which is how much of the total market cap belongs to the coin. However, this is still 4% — or 3 basis points — lower than two weeks ago. Meanwhile, many of the altcoins have recently seen gains, some of which even went for double-digit gains. Combining the two has led many to assume that altcoin season might soon arrive.
Altcoin season, or altseason, is when altcoins start growing in value. They all share less than half of the total crypto market cap, while Bitcoin alone holds the rest of it. But, when the balance starts to shift, BTC starts losing money, and altcoins tend to end up at the receiving end.
The past several weeks have seen plenty of movement and volatility in the crypto sector. A lot of people started selling their coins due to the coronavirus pandemic fears. The panic spread just as easily as the virus, and the total market cap of the crypto industry dropped to $108 billion.
Bitcoin itself dropped by over 50% at one time, although a recovery came quickly enough. The past week especially brought gains to BTC, as well as many of the altcoins. Then, as the week started approaching its end, another drop came. Meanwhile, some of the altcoins saw major growth, such as VeChain, which surged by 20% in only 24 hours. Digibyte grew by 16% last week, while Chainlink surged by 15%.
Crypto market defies all expectations
However, it is still uncertain what will happen, as Bitcoin’s dropping dominance goes against expectations. Many expect it to rise due to the current economic conditions. After all, cryptos are far from being the only — or the worst — losers. All traditional markets saw price declines, after the initial panic, many started turning to crypto.
This led to some highly positive predictions for Bitcoin, such as the possibility of it reaching 90% dominance.
Not to mention the fact that Bitcoin halving is only a month away now, and halving historically always causes a price surge. Usually, that surge takes a while to arrive, but this time, with the COVID-19 pandemic, things may yet play out differently.
In such a situation, an altcoin surge defies expectations, while experts claim that the economic crisis is only starting.