Bitcoin’s dominance of the total crypto market cap rose to 49.6% – a level not seen since late April 2021 – a 111-week high.
The period around April 2021 is related to the first wave of the previous bull cycle, with BTC peaking at $65,000 in early April 2021.
Despite China’s crypto ban and Elon Musk turning sour on the green credentials of bitcoin miners, a second wave extended these losses to $69,000 by November 2021 – the cycle peak marked.
Currently, bitcoin dominance drops below 50% on June 10 as selling pressure leads to total market capital outflows $61.8 billion – at a low of $1.038 trillion as of Saturday evening (BST).
The SEC lawsuits last week were likely to delay the sell-off – as the gravity of the situation takes hold, especially the potential delisting of altcoins from all US exchanges.
Last week, the SEC filed charges against Binance and Coinbase for operating an unregistered exchange and offering unregistered securities to US citizens, among other charges.
bitcoin relatively unaffected
Despite the drop in outflows from the overall crypto market, bitcoin remained relatively stable, losing 3.5% in value over the past seven days.
Over the past week, the biggest Top 100 losers were The Sandbox, Decenterland, and Axi Infinity, which were down 36%, 34%, and 33%, respectively. The 24-hour movement for the three coins comes in at 0.3%, 0.5% and 0.6% respectively – indicating that the market remains uncertain even after the massive price drop.
The US Securities Exchange Commission named SAND, MANA and AXS Securities in the lawsuit against both Binance and Coinbase. Nineteen tokens were designated as securities by the SEC, including large caps such as SOL, ADA, and Matic.
The chart above shows bitcoin dominance reversing its downtrend around September 2022, as the FTX collapse illustrated an unfavorable narrative around “tokens created out of thin air” – unlike BTC, which is an energy is consumed and supported by a supposedly decentralized network.
With bitcoin’s commodity status, a degree of protection from regulatory hostility is expected, resulting in BTC dominance poised to move higher with altcoins flying higher.
