Bitcoin’s latest advance pushed its market dominance even higher, causing a lot more damage to altcoins. The much-awaited altcoin season doesn’t appear to be anywhere nearby, as Bitcoin has been taking it all for itself. Let’s have a closer look at the impact.
Bitcoin surged from around $11,450 to almost $13,000 in the span of a couple of days. This represents an increase of 12%. At the time of this writing, BTC is trading at around $12,850.
Following the spike in the price, Bitcoin’s dominance rate, measuring its relative share of the entire cryptocurrency market, also increased by about 2%. As of now, BTC comprises 65% of the overall market. The last time BTC dominance was this high was the beginning of December 2017 right before Bitcoin’s parabolic advance to its all-time high (ATH) value of $20,000.
What this suggests is that altcoins continue to struggle and that an altcoin season is perhaps not in plain sight just yet. As CryptoPotato reported, certain popular analysts expect the next altcoin season to come in 2020.
While most of the major large-cap altcoins managed to make notable gains against the dollar, their performance against BTC has been nothing but lacking in the past three months.
Ethereum, the second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, is down about 35% against BTC in the past three months alone. This becomes even more alarming when you look at the bigger picture, as the cryptocurrency is currently trading at its absolute lowest point against Bitcoin.
Ripple’s XRP has also continued to struggle and recently created fresh 2019 and 19-month lows as it dropped beneath the support at 3,370 satoshi. As noted in our last XRP price analysis, the nearest levels of support right now are at 3,100 sat and 3,000 sat. Looking at the RSI, it remains under 50, meaning that bears are still in control of the market.
Litecoin (LTC) is also experiencing hard times against the unstoppable Bitcoin. The pain was felt exclusively throughout the past month. Back on June 19, Litecoin was worth 0.017BTC, while it’s currently trading at around 0.009 BTC. This represents a decline of around 50%.
Small-cap altcoins have also taken a serious hit, perhaps even more serious than larger ones have. For example, one of the more popular smaller-cap projects, Zilliqa, saw its cryptocurrency (ZIL) drop from around 0.0000051 BTC to 0.0000013 BTC, which represents a decrease of close to 80%.
We have yet to see whether or not Bitcoin will continue crushing altcoins as it is right now. But it’s safe to say that they’ve taken a serious beating.
