The cryptocurrency market as a whole continued moving higher on Wednesday, led by bitcoin (BTC), which extended its week-over-week gain to more than 12%, rising above $68,000 for the first time since late July. The broad market gauge CoinDesk 20 Index was higher by just 9% over the same time frame.
Bitcoin’s “dominance,” i.e. its share of the total cryptocurrency market capitalization, has now jumped to 58.91% from 57.13% at the start of October. That’s a new cycle high and the strongest reading since April 2021, according to TradingView’s TOTAL, which shows a total crypto market cap of $2.281 trillion and $940 billion when excluding bitcoin.
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Bitcoin dominance rose to above 70% at one point during the 2020-21 bull market before declining to as low as 40% in mid-2021. Dominance hovered around those levels for more than a year, finally bottoming alongside the collapse of crypto exchange FTX in late 2022. A steady rise than began, which has continued up to the current time.
Ether to bitcoin ratio
Behind much of bitcoin’s rising dominance is the relative decline in the second-largest crypto by market cap, ether (ETH). The current ether/bitcoin ratio of around 0.03850 is at its weakest level since April 2021.
A closer look at the ETH/BTC ratio from its cycle bottom in June 2022 shows a continuing series of weaker lows.In previous cycles, such as the 2016-2019 and 2019-2022 periods, the ETH/BTC ratio was at least 200% higher from the cycle low at this point. However, the current ratio is 25% beneath its June 2022 cycle low, highlighting ether’s underperformance against bitcoin.
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Lastly, ether has outperformed bitcoin in just seven of the past 23 months. Ether’s most recent month of relative outperformance was back in May 2024.