The index which measures Bitcoin’s overall percentage of the total cryptocurrency market share by market capitalization is currently recording its 8-month low: Bitcoin Dominance recently recorded a low of 50.7%, which is the lowest it has been since mid-August 2018. Bitcoin’s current total market capitalization stands around $71.5 billion, while Bitcoin’s price is struggling to stay above $4000.
As Cryptopotato reported back in September 2018, Bitcoin’s price has always been an important and leading indicator of how well the cryptocurrency market is doing. It also impacts directly the dominance index.
Bitcoin has always been the primary cryptocurrency, especially in the period between 2009 and 2016 when the Altcoins weren’t so popular. For example, in February 2017, Bitcoin dominance was almost 88%, making its current condition a far cry of what it was.
Following the 2017 ICO boom, however, many Altcoins started to grow in popularity and, respectively, in price and market cap. This caused them to acquire a larger percentage of the market share, hence lowering Bitcoin’s dominance index over the crypto market cap.
Periods, when Bitcoin’s dominance is decreasing steadily, are indicative of the so-called ‘Altcoin season’ or ‘altseasons’. This term is used to describe a period in the market cycle when Altcoins tend to experience large spikes in their value against Bitcoin, which is also usually bringing their USD value. This is usually takes place when Bitcoin is stable.
We’ve recently discussed the formation of an Altseason in 2019. One very strong indicator that signaled it was the rising interest toward Altcoins as demonstrated by Google Trends. In addition, with Bitcoin dominance continuing to drop, it appears more and more deterministic that 2019’s spring will be all about altcoins.
However, It’s also worth noting, that the interest towards Altcoins is nowhere near its all-time high peak back in late 2017.
We’ve already seen some of the cryptocurrencies such as Binance Coin (BNB) lead the march, managing to almost double up in price for a brief monthly period.
Just today, at the time of this writing, another altcoin – Ontology (ONT) has surged upwards of 12 percent in the last 24 hours. Ravencoin (RVN), on the other hand, is up more than 23 percent on the day. It is exactly spikes like these in minor altcoin’s prices which demonstrate the presence of an Altseason.
