Bitcoin Dominance (BTC.D) Dropped on the Crypto Dip

Bitcoin dominance (BTC.D, TradingView) dropped over the past week, even as the crypto market sold off. That’s a bit unusual: when crypto falls, dominance often rises – because investors see it as “safer” than most altcoins. This time bitcoin fell more than the general market. 

What bitcoin dominance just did

Bitcoin dominance measures bitcoin’s slice of the total crypto market cap. Now, that includes stablecoins like USDT and USDC – so it’s not a perfect measure of “bitcoin vs altcoins”. Still, it generally drops when altcoins outrun bitcoin – or when bitcoin falls harder than they do.

Bitcoin dominance peaked at 66.03% in June 2025. Since then its rally has fizzled out – meaning bitcoin hasn’t really “dominated” the rest of the market. It’s now back below 60%.

This time it was because bitcoin fell more than the rest of the market. According to the snapshot below from CoinMarketCap, bitcoin dropped about 11% over seven days – more than Ethereum, Solana, and Cardano, which each fell about 10%. A few altcoins even went up. Zcash (ZEC) rose about 7% on the week, Hyperliquid (HYPE) did over 15%, and Stellar (XLM) over 50%.

So the next obvious question is: what happens to all these altcoins when bitcoin rallies next?

As usual, none of this is investment advice. To learn more about bitcoin dominance, check out our Bitcoin Dominance (BTC.D guide.