Bitcoin (BTC) has been incurring a significant amount of upwards momentum as of late that allowed it to put an end to the month-long bout of selling pressure it has faced over the past month, which has also allowed it gain significant dominance over the aggregated crypto market capitalization.
Furthermore, data shows that Bitcoin has been dominating trading volume on major exchanges like Coinbase, which signals that traders are not currently interested in altcoins and are primarily focused on pouring their capital into BTC.
Bitcoin Briefly Surges Past $12,000 as Dominance Rises to Nearly 70%
At the time of writing, Bitcoin is trading down marginally at its current price of $11,700 and is up slightly from its daily lows of $11,600 that were set yesterday and revisited earlier today.
Last night, Bitcoin surged past the $12,000 region before facing a sharp increase in selling pressure that sent it reeling lower. This selling pressure proved that the cryptocurrency is not yet ready to journey into the $12,000 region and may signal that further losses are imminent.
At the time, most major altcoins have been facing a significant surge in selling pressure that has caused many of them to plummet against their BTC trading pairs, which has allowed Bitcoin’s market dominance to surge to nearly 70%
Currently, Bitcoin’s market dominance is at the highest it has been since mid-2017 and is nearing levels not seen since the years before 2017.
Other major cryptocurrencies, like Ethereum and XRP, have been seeing a continuous decline in their dominance over the market, and smaller cryptocurrencies have surrendered even more of their market cap to Bitcoin.
Bitcoin Dominates Trading Volume on Coinbase
This surge in market dominance has come about as a result of significantly higher-than-average BTC trading volume on major exchanges like Coinbase.
Larry Cermak, the director of research at The Block, spoke about this increased trading volume in a recent tweet, explaining that Bitcoin alone was responsible for 72% of the trading volume on Coinbase over the past 24 hours, signaling that investors have little to no interest in smaller altcoins at the present.
“Coinbase volume breakdown in the last 24 hours: BTC – 72.0% LTC – 10.2% (outlier this week because of the halving) ETH – 8.8% BCH – 2.5% XRP – 2.5% Chainlink – 1.4%. The rest combined (EOS, XLM, BAT, ETC, REP, ZRX, ZEC, Decentraland, Golem, district0x, Loom, Civic) – 4%,” he noted.
Coinbase volume breakdown in the last 24 hours:
BTC – 72.0%
LTC – 10.2% (outlier this week because of the halving)
ETH – 8.8%
BCH – 2.5%
XRP – 2.5%
Chainlink – 1.4%The rest combined (EOS, XLM, BAT, ETC, REP, ZRX, ZEC, Decentraland, Golem, district0x, Loom, Civic) – 4% pic.twitter.com/6vdEk304mt
— Larry Cermak (@lawmaster) August 6, 2019
Although it still remains unclear as to whether or not Bitcoin is currently in a full uptrend, it is clear that investors are not yet interested in altcoins, and the prophesized “altseason” may be a long way off.
Featured image from Shutterstock.
