Altcoins Are Still Way Behind As The Bitcoin Touches $17K Price Zone Keeping The BTC Dominance Levels High

What Is The Price Cap Of Bitcoin?

When the crypto asset surpassed the $17k price zone on Tuesday, the price of bitcoin touched another 2020 all-time high on November 17.

Currently hovering at 65% this week, bitcoin dominance has risen higher during the last few months. Altcoins are not performing as well as they did when bitcoin was at this price range three years ago despite the massive rise in bitcoin value during the last few months. 

When it reached $19,600 per coin that year, back in 2017, bitcoin (BTC) touched an all-time high on December 17. As numerous altcoins saw significant increases in value three years ago, bitcoin’s dominance index was slightly different in 2017 than it is today. Paired against the 7000+ other altcoin market valuations in existence today, bitcoin dominance is essentially the recorded metric of BTC’s market capitalisation. 

Thereafter, it was seen that Bitcoin’s dominance index was falling to an all-time low of 32% as then the altcoin value increases seen three years ago, continued into the next year and on January 14, 2018. The crypto asset’s dominance increased 103% since the second week of January 2018 with BTC holding a 65% dominance level today. 

Bitcoin’s price is hovering just above the $17k zone and the crypto asset’s market cap is around $315 billion at the time of publication on Tuesday. Altcoins were performing much better than they are today as historical price charts show that when BTC was priced at $17k or above three years ago. In this situation, there are some believing that it never will, when the trend has then given traders as well as speculators the opinion that the infamous altcoin season has not started. History shows on December 17, 2017, Ethereum was swapping for $719 per unit for instance. The crypto asset is still down 34% from that price range on December 17, today, even though ETH has gained 256% this year. 

The Competition For The Asset Prices. 

The crypto asset still needs to gain over 67% to get to that position again as ETH also touched an ATH of $ 1,431. Indicating that XRP was swapping for $0.72 on the 17th, and it is still down 58% from that position is another historical snapshot from the same day in December.

As it remains 92% below that point today, in fact, XRP is down considerably from the $3.84 ATH. How tether has grown massively since December 17 is another interesting change during the last three years.

In terms of market cap, the stablecoin sat in the 24th market cap position as on that day, USDT the notorious stablecoin was of course swapping for a dollar. 

In terms of market valuation with $17.9 billion under the hood, today tether is the third-largest blockchain. Since the 17th of December 2017, that means that tether’s market cap has increased a whopping 1,527%.

Thereby observed is tether’s valuation if any with the market cap in 2020 that is stopping bitcoin from capturing a much higher dominance percentage. LTC managed to capture the position again as interestingly back in December 2017, Litecoin was also hovering in the fifth-largest market cap position just the other day. 

LTC was swapping for $318 per unit and it's still down 77% from that range on the 17th of December 2017. LTC thereby needs to gain almost over 80% in order to reach the $375 ATH it touched years ago in fact.

Trading for $1,862 per unit, bitcoin cash also held the third-largest position on the 17th of December 2017. As the digital currency trades for $252 today, the crypto asset BCH needs to climb more than 86% to capture that price range again. 

Except for Cardano, the rest of the coins in 2020’s top ten rankings were not present in the top ten back in 2017. IOTA, dash, and monero were the three coins that were present in the top ten on the 17th of December 2017. Subsequently, it is seen to have been replaced by Polkadot, chainlink, as also Binance coin today in 2020. Cardano was trading for $0.51 per unit at that time three years ago. ADA is still down 78% from that point and 91% behind the $1.33 ATH on November 17, 2020. 

The Conclusion 

To conclude as the traders are still waiting for one of those notorious points in time which are referred to as altcoin season or altseason despite the statistics. The altcoin season topic is trending and a number of crypto proponents are waiting for it to arrive on crypto-related forums and social media. One individual tweeted the other day that 

As summer comes after spring, altcoin season comes after bitcoin season. 

Another crypto proponent wrote about how it looks like BTC dominance is rising whereas the price is not rising so much the same day. 

Further on the individual tweeted, which keeps Bitcoin up for a while, he thinks the money is leaving Alts —> BTC —> USDT. Exiting into BTC to then dump in USD is until Alts without USD pairs. Agreeing with the analysis was the Twitter account dubbed Altcoin Sherpa saying: in general money seems to be leaving altcoins. Not altseason quite yet, but the thigh time frame trends on those are still bearish IMO, as he added.