Bitcoin dominance today
One number tells you where crypto capital is hiding. BTC.D — Bitcoin’s slice of the entire market’s value — is the fastest way to see whether money is crowding into Bitcoin or rotating out into altcoins. The reading below is live.
BTC dominance
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How Bitcoin dominance is calculated
The formula is one line: BTC market cap ÷ total crypto market cap × 100. The subtleties live in the denominator. “Total” spans every listed asset — thousands of tokens, from Ethereum down to dead coins with a few dollars of daily volume — so the number shifts not only when prices move but when new tokens list, supplies unlock or stablecoins mint. Dominance is a ratio of two moving targets, which is exactly why it carries more information than either number alone.
Historically the metric has swung through full market cycles: above 90% in Bitcoin’s early years, below 40% at the 2017-18 ICO peak and again during the 2021 altcoin frenzy, then grinding back up through the 2022-23 bear as speculative capital left the long tail. Each regime change told the same story from a different angle — dominance rises when conviction narrows to Bitcoin and falls when risk appetite broadens.
Three ways traders actually use BTC.D
- Rotation timing. Falling dominance during a rising market historically marks the window when altcoin portfolios outrun a plain BTC position — and when it turns back up, that window is closing.
- Regime filter. Many systematic traders only take altcoin setups when dominance trades below its own moving average, treating BTC.D as a permission switch rather than a signal in itself.
- Divergence warnings. New Bitcoin price highs paired with falling dominance suggest the rally is broadening; new highs with surging dominance suggest alts are being sold to fund it.
Pair the dial above with the Fear & Greed Index for sentiment and the Altcoin Season Index for breadth, and you have a compact three-gauge dashboard of the whole market’s temperature.
Frequently asked questions
What is Bitcoin dominance (BTC.D)?
Bitcoin dominance is BTC’s market capitalization divided by the market capitalization of all cryptocurrencies combined, expressed as a percentage. If the entire market is worth $3 trillion and Bitcoin accounts for $1.8 trillion, dominance is 60%. It measures Bitcoin’s relative weight, not its price.
What does rising Bitcoin dominance mean?
Rising dominance means capital is concentrating in BTC — either Bitcoin is climbing faster than altcoins, or altcoins are bleeding harder in a sell-off. Traders read sustained rises as a risk-off signal within crypto: money rotating from speculative assets into the market’s reserve asset.
What does falling dominance signal for altcoins?
When dominance falls while total market cap holds or grows, altcoins are outperforming Bitcoin — the classic setup people call altcoin season. Our Altcoin Season Index quantifies exactly that by counting how many of the top 50 coins beat BTC over the trailing window.
Does stablecoin growth distort the dominance number?
Yes, meaningfully. USDT and USDC together hold a mid-single-digit share of the total market cap, and that share swells in bear markets when traders park in dollars. Some analysts therefore track dominance excluding stablecoins to isolate the real BTC-versus-altcoin rotation.
Where does the data on this page come from?
The widget pulls live global market data on every page load, aggregated across thousands of listed assets and hundreds of exchanges. It is the same source used by our global market cap page, so the two always agree.