Bitcoin Dominance

Bitcoin Dominance plots BTC’s share of the total tracked cryptoasset market capitalisation as a single 0–100% line, drawn against the right axis. The muted line behind it is Bitcoin’s USD price on the left log scale, carried forward so regime shifts can be read alongside price action. Coverage starts 1 May 2013 — among the longest single-line histories on the site — and runs to the most recent daily close.

Today’s reading is 59.9% — Mid-band. Bitcoin’s market cap is $1528.60B; the implied total cryptoasset market cap is $2553.62B across 1,581 daily observations. Over the last 60 days dominance has moved +0.6 pts. Index values refresh overnight; spot in the reading row above auto-refreshes a few times a day in the browser.

The formula is mechanical:

Dominance = BTC market cap / Total cryptoasset market cap

Bitcoin market cap is spot price × circulating supply — the latter deterministic from the halving schedule and including any coins long since lost. The denominator is the sum of every tracked cryptoasset’s market cap, including stablecoins (USDT, USDC, DAI…) and wrapped tokens (WBTC, stETH…). Different publishers track different baskets and apply slightly different inclusion rules, so dominance numbers across sites disagree by a percentage point or two on the same day. Provenance for the basket we ship is documented on the data sources page.

The 60-day trend cell on the reading row above tracks the change in dominance over a rolling 60 trading days, expressed in percentage points. A +2 pts move over 60 days reads as “Dominance expanding”; a −2 pts move reads as “Dominance contracting”; between the two is “Stable”. Sustained directional motion over two months is more meaningful than the instantaneous level, especially in a market where the absolute number is structurally biased by stablecoin supply growth. For the regime classifier and threshold choices, see the methodology page.

Dominance is a relative-performance gauge between Bitcoin and the rest of the cryptoasset complex — it does not forecast Bitcoin’s USD price. The two regimes the chart resolves cleanly are the high band (BTC-led) and the low band (Altcoin-led); everything between is transitional. The 60-day trend cell matters more than the instantaneous level. Sustained directional motion — several percentage points over two months — tends to anchor durable regimes. Whiplash around a flat level is noise, often driven by stablecoin supply changes rather than altcoin flows.

Reading dominance against canonical cycle anchors makes the cyclic pattern explicit. The 2013 cycle topped near 88.5%; the 2017 cycle topped near 53.0%, a totally different basket; the dominance ATL came one month later as ICO supply saturated the denominator. The 2018 and 2022 cycle lows both pulled dominance back above 50%; the 2024 pre-halving high sat above 50% for the first time at a cycle peak since 2017. Cycle by cycle, peaks have anchored to lower dominance levels and bottoms have anchored to higher ones — consistent with a maturing market in which alt capital does not fully drain on the way down.

One thing the dominance line does not advertise: the basket it divides into has not been the same basket. Dominance is the ratio of Bitcoin to a denominator that gained new verticals in every cycle, and watching the line move from 95% to 38% is partly the story of the denominator’s growth, not just Bitcoin’s relative weakness.

A second cut: dominance's range within each cycle window. The pattern is monotonic in two dimensions — each cycle's high reads lower than the last cycle's, and each cycle's low reads higher than the last. The basket has grown more diverse and the floor has thickened.

For a dollar-cost-averaging investor. Modest signal. A steady weekly buy operates on a multi-year horizon, and the dominance regime is one input into the question of which asset to accumulate. If the whole thesis is Bitcoin, dominance is a peripheral interest. If the thesis allocates across the broader complex, sustained low-dominance regimes are when the rest of the basket is rallying harder — and historically, when the cycle is closer to topping than bottoming.

For a cycle-timing trader. The 60-day trend is the more useful cell than the instantaneous level. Sustained directional motion of several percentage points over two months tends to anchor durable regimes; whiplash around a flat level is noise. Pair with the Altcoin Season Index, which excludes stablecoins and reads the BTC-versus-alts rotation more directly, and the stablecoin float to disentangle stablecoin-driven dominance moves from altcoin-driven ones.

For a researcher. The series, the daily timestamps, the regime classifier and the BTC and total cryptoasset market caps are the only inputs. The methodology page lists every choice. The denominator-shift table above is the page’s distinctive contribution — cross-cycle dominance comparisons rest on a basket that has changed character at least four times since 2013.

Dominance is not a directional Bitcoin signal. It is a relative-performance ratio between Bitcoin and the rest of the cryptoasset complex. Reading high dominance as “bullish for Bitcoin price” or low dominance as “bearish for Bitcoin price” mistakes the ratio for the numerator. The 2018 cycle low printed dominance back above 50% with Bitcoin capitulating; the 2017 cycle top printed dominance below 40% with Bitcoin at a new ATH. The chart says nothing about Bitcoin’s USD price by itself.

Stablecoin issuance moves dominance mechanically. A $5B stablecoin mint enters the denominator as new market cap; dominance compresses on a market-flat day where nobody traded Bitcoin. Conversely, a redemption wave — the USDC SVB week (Mar 10–13, 2023) is the canonical example — can lift dominance overnight without Bitcoin moving. The Altcoin Season Index excludes stablecoins by construction; when dominance and the ASI disagree, the disagreement is the signal.

The basket's character changes cycle to cycle. Pre-2017 dominance had a few dozen alts in the denominator; 2026 dominance has a ~$300B stablecoin float, several thousand DeFi tokens, and dozens of L1 chains. Cross-cycle comparisons are robust to the question of trend; they are not robust to the question of what specifically the rest of the basket contains. The Real Bitcoin Dominance Index strips stablecoins and non-PoW assets and prints in the 70–76% range over recent years — a different reading of the same underlying question.

Different publishers track different baskets. The total cryptoasset market cap depends on which assets are tracked, which exchanges feed prices, and how illiquid micro-caps are filtered. Different sources publish dominance numbers on the same day that differ by a percentage point or more. We ship one consistent basket; do not splice readings across providers.

Canonical questions from Google’s “People also ask” block for bitcoin dominance, answered against the data on this page.