Interest in the cryptocurrency markets continues to be concentrated in the benchmark bitcoin (BTC) cryptocurrency, with altcoins suffering an off-season that is increasingly looking like a permanent fixture.
Bitcoin’s market capitalisation now comprises 51.2% of the entire global crypto market, up from just 41% at the start of 2023.
This is still a far way off the 70%-plus in bitcoin dominance seen in December 2020, but less than 120 basis points away from 32-month highs.
High bond yields and volatile global equities markets are souring the mood for highly speculative and risky altcoins, particularly those with weaker, less-fleshed-out fundamentals.
Instead, crypto traders are putting their bets on bitcoin, a perceived safe haven in the risky digital asset sector.
Despite bitcoin’s preference among traders for the world’s largest cryptocurrency, it is still failing to break above the 200-day trend line, with rejection at $28,000 happening again on Monday.
Bitcoin closed the session 1.2% lower and is currently swapping for $27,684.
Bitcoin remains 7% lower over six months – Source: tradingview.com
The second-largest cryptocurrency Ethereum (ETH) vastly underperformed yesterday, slipping more than 3% to be knocked below $1,600 for the first time in over two weeks.
Ether’s poor performance caused a headache in the futures market, where around $31 million in long positions were wiped out.
Meanwhile, long-bitcoin positions saw around $7 million in liquidations.
It’s a sea of red in the broader altcoin space when looking at week-on-week price movements. Solana (SOL) is down more than 6% while Cardano (ADA), Dogecoin (DOGE), Toncoin (TON), Ripple (XRP) and BNB are all down in the low single digits.
Global cryptocurrency market capitalisation fell 1.2% to $1.07 trillion overnight.