Even though Bitcoin is still dominating the overall cryptocurrency market, its \u200eundisputed position has recently taken a few bumps along the road with the rise of altcoins.<\/p>\n
Bitcoin Dominance Index, which measures the market cap of Bitcoin \u200ecompared to all other cryptocurrencies in existence, \u200etoday has fallen to its lowest level since\u00a0CoinMarketCap.com\u00a0started \u200epublishing its statistics in April 2013. Its current value illustrates that \u200eBitcoin\u2019s dominance has dipped to 37.60% over the past three weeks, which \u200eis an all-time low.\u200e<\/p>\n
This is good news for people who hold diversified portfolios, though this authoritative index doesn\u2019t necessarily tell \u200ethe whole story either.\u200e<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s recall that Bitcoin regained its 65% \u200edominance over the \u200ecryptocurrency market in early December, which came \u200efive months after dropping \u200ebelow the 40% threshold, primarily due to the strong rally \u200ethat took the price higher to around \u200e\u200e$20,000 per coin\u200e\u200f.\u200f \u200e<\/p>\n
Crypto enthusiasts\u200e should take away two important lessons from \u200eJune\u2019s decline: cryptocurrency investors turn back \u200eto Bitcoin in \u200etimes of instability and uncertainty, and the chief coin can recover \u200efrom massive drops caused by major corrections\u200f.\u200f<\/p>\n
It\u2019s also important to consider the dependence of other crypto coins on \u200ebitcoin and the \u200enetwork effect it presents over the virtual currency market. \u200eExcept for a few coins, a \u200esignificant drop in bitcoin prices led to the \u200edecline of other altcoins. In \u200emost cases, altcoins suffered deeper losses in \u200emarket cap and price in \u200econtrast to bitcoin\u200f.\u200f<\/p>\n
Bitcoin losing to altcoins in market cap dominance doesn\u2019t mean its own market cap \u200eshrinks. The adoption, market \u200evalue, frenzy and price of bitcoin are all healthier than ever and thus continue to defy skeptics. However, it means that its longstanding supremacy is cooling off as the market \u200ematures and other crypto assets share \u200emore equally within the \u200eoverall combined capital.<\/p>\n
A clear evidence is that Bitcoin boasted an impressive 88% market capital dominance in December 2016. Delving into Q3 2017, the price was printing \u200eall-time highs coming in almost daily while the dominance has slowly decreased over \u200etime.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Bitcoin still generates most of the trading volume, even altcoins that have gained \u200emainstream traction as of late mainly get their trading volume \u200efrom the Bitcoin trading pair.<\/p>\n
A portion of Bitcoin\u2019s recent downtrend, in terms of market dominance, \u200e can be attributed to Ripple\u2019s massive appreciation as the coin was a rare exception to the cryptocurrency bloodbath in December. The \u200esurging altcoin, which was designed for banks and global money transfers, challenged Ethereum for the second post in the market cap \u200erankings.\u200e Further, it \u200ehas surged roughly 24000% in 2017.<\/p>\n
Ripple\u2019s recent rise can likely be attributed to its adoption by major banks in Asia in a bid to reduce costs of international funds transfers, and as the XRP\u2019s developers have recently established a partnership \u200ewith some of the Japan\u2019s largest credit card providers.\u200e<\/p>\n
While competitive to a degree, Bitcoin and Ripple aren\u2019t direct threats to one another.\u200e The two cryptocurrency giants seemingly have different missions at the \u200emoment. Ripple appears intent on pushing its blockchain to enterprises, \u200ewhile Bitcoin has focused extensively on building up its reputation as \u200ea payment \u200efacilitator\u200e.<\/p>\n
However, this narrative could change as Ripple, \u200ewhile trying to settle transactions in real \u200etime to keep costs down, is essentially challenging Bitcoin \u200ewhich struggles with these drawbacks. Indeed, recent infighting in bitcoin\u2019s development community has provided the perfect chance for alternatives to stress their value propositions and even \u200eassert new ones.\u200e<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Even though Bitcoin is still dominating the overall cryptocurrency market, its \u200eundisputed position has recently taken a few bumps along the road with the rise of altcoins. Bitcoin Dominance Index, which measures the market cap of Bitcoin \u200ecompared to all other cryptocurrencies in existence, \u200etoday has fallen to its lowest level since\u00a0CoinMarketCap.com\u00a0started \u200epublishing its statistics […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":434,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"single-classic-boxed.php","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[30,19,4,34],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timestampmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timestampmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timestampmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timestampmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timestampmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=433"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/timestampmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timestampmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timestampmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timestampmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timestampmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}