70 Percent: Bitcoin Dominance Rate Hits Highest Mark Since Spring 2017

The bitcoin dominance rate, a metric indicating how much the market capitalization of bitcoin accounts for in the entire cryptoeconomy’s market cap, just reached over 70 percent for the first time since March 2017.

Notably, that spring was right before the 2017 initial coin offering (ICO) boom started to seriously heat up. Accordingly, the BTC dominance rate — which has been decisively uptrending in recent months and specifically crossed over the 70 percent mark this September 3rd — has returned to prior form with a 30 month high in the post-ICO bubble landscape.

Per cryptocurrency data aggregator Messari, that rate has now climbed even higher, sitting at 73.9 percent at the time of this article’s writing. So there may be more rising yet if the cryptoeconomy’s winds keep blowing how they have been in 2019.

The interesting milestone comes as bitcoin has yet to experience a “flippening” — being overtaken by another cryptocurrency in market cap. The nearest challenge the space has yet seen came in June 2017, when Ethereum’s $34 billion cap came within range of bitcoin’s $42 billion cap at the time.

Close but no cigar: Ethereum came within striking distance of the bitcoin market cap in the summer of 2017. Image via Flippening Watch

Presently, the market cap of bitcoin is over $191 billion while the market cap of ether (ETH) is just under $19.5 billion, so in that regard BTC has considerably pulled ahead of ether and the other top cryptocurrencies over the last two years.

Some in the ecosystem have taken the recent declines of other cryptocurrencies against bitcoin as further indication that the OG crypto by far remains king. For example, on September 2nd classical chartist Peter Brandt posted a series of ETH/BTC, LTC/BTC, and XRP/BTC trading charts and used them to suggest that other top crypto projects couldn’t currently hold a candle to bitcoin. He wrote:

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“When will altcoin junkies understand that BTC is the crypto with real and lasting value. Altcoins are to Bitcoin what lead is to Gold.”

Optimist Buyers: Bitcoin Enters the Week With a Rally

Last week, talks of a bearish market reversal picked up as the bitcoin price sunk down to $9,500 at one point. However, this week started with buy pressure acutely returning once more, as BTC gained more than 7 percent intraday on September 2nd to hit over $10,400.

One day later, buyers have kept up the momentum, with bitcoin trading near $10,700 at the time of this article’s writing. The latest surge puts BTC up 37 percent on the month and up 47 percent on the year.

Of course, during the depths of the 2018 crypto bull market some skeptics said bitcoin would never reach $10,000 ever again. Yet BTC has reached that price a few times so far in 2019.

The hovering of the bitcoin price around $10,000 in recent months has come as institutional investors are increasingly becoming involved with the cryptoeconomy and as fears around the ongoing U.S.-China trade war and other economic crises have grown.

As far as global economic woes go, some analysts believe they could increasingly drive investors toward bitcoin as a safe haven asset. For example, eToro analyst Simon Peters recently told the London Economic:

“[C]onsidering bitcoin as a safe-haven asset might not be an easy thing to do. Extreme price volatility, hacks and allegations of price manipulation still weigh on its reputation, however the correlation with gold on eToro’s platform could be a sign that the overall perception of bitcoin is gradually shifting from speculative towards a lower-risk store of value.”

Whether bitcoin can once again cross its all-time price high of $20,000 remains to be seen. But it’s clear for now that as the current leader of the crypto market, bitcoin is well poised to grow further in popularity as the cryptoeconomy itself becomes increasingly popular.

   

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