Bitcoin Remains on Top as Altcoin Season Fails to Materialize

The cryptocurrency market experienced a significant rally last week, providing a much-needed boost for many short-term speculators to turn profits. Bitcoin led the charge, surpassing the $64,790 mark, though the momentum appeared to have eased by the time of writing.

This surge was mirrored across the altcoin landscape, with several cryptocurrencies, including TRON, Avalanche (AVAX), and Chainlink (LINK), recording impressive gains ranging from 20% to 30% within just seven days.

Despite these gains among widespread altcoins, Bitcoin continues to exert dominance over the entire market.

Bitcoin Increases Dominance: What Does It Mean For Altcoins?

The altcoin season has yet to build up steam since the beginning of the year as Bitcoin continues to receive the lion’s share of investor attention. This is clearly reflected in the Altcoin Season Index, which currently registers a reading of 22 and tipping the scale in favor of Bitcoin. The scale also reads a 29 on the Altcoin Monthly Index, also in favor of Bitcoin.

Essentially, the index works by analyzing the performance of various altcoins against Bitcoin. If 75% of the top 50 altcoins performed better than Bitcoin in the past 90 days, it is altcoin season. If 75% of the top 50 altcoins performed better than Bitcoin in the past 90 days, it is deemed an altcoin month. Interestingly, the last official altcoin season occurred during the 2021 bull run. 

According to the chart below, the last time market dominance almost tipped in favor of altcoins was in January 2024, when it climbed above 75 for only a few days. Nowadays, the scale mostly ranges around 20 to 30, pushing the altcoin season further out of reach. In fact, the index even dipped as low as 12 on July 30, further highlighting the ongoing dominance of Bitcoin.

Supporting this Bitcoin dominance trend is the price data from CoinMarketCap, At the time of writing, Bitcoin is trading at $63,850 with a market cap of $1.26 trillion. This represents a 6.92% increase in the last seven days. As such, 56.3% of the entire crypto market value is currently sitting in Bitcoin.

What’s The Performance Outlook For Altcoins?

Due to Bitcoin’s dominance, many altcoins now tend to mirror its performance. However, there are periods of exceptions where some altcoins experience notable rallies independently. At the time of writing, Ethereum commands the largest share of the altcoin market cap with $314.2 billion. Other altcoins collectively hold a market cap of $438.48 billion, while stablecoins have a market cap of $161.97 billion. 

The most impressive gains currently go to Sun Token, a stablecoin swap token based on TRON, which has gained 305% in seven days. Memecoins Dogwifhat (WIF) and POPCAT have also gained 32.7% and 76%, respectively, in the same timeframe.

Undoubtedly, altcoins will continue to see varying degrees of performance based on their individual utility and market adoption. 

Featured image from Pexels, chart from TradingView