When the crypto market sells off, not every coin falls by the same amount. In the drop of early October 2026, altcoins fell harder than bitcoin, and bitcoin's share of the whole market rose from 58.6% on October 1 to 59.5% on October 10 (source: CoinMarketCap). That share is called bitcoin dominance. It is one of the first numbers traders check when prices move sharply, because it shows whether money is crowding into bitcoin or spreading out into other coins.
The exact figure depends on where you look: four well-known data sites can give readings more than three points apart within the same few minutes, even though they agree on the value of bitcoin itself. Knowing why they disagree, and what a rise or a fall really tells you, matters more than any single reading.
What is bitcoin dominance?
Bitcoin dominance is bitcoin's share of the total value of the crypto market, written as a percentage and often shortened to BTC.D. It is bitcoin's market capitalization divided by the market capitalization of all cryptocurrencies combined (source: TradingView). It measures bitcoin's slice of the market, not bitcoin's price.
Whatever bitcoin does not hold belongs to everything else, and traders call that remainder altcoin dominance. If bitcoin holds three fifths of the market, altcoins and stablecoins together hold the other two fifths. So the number can move even when bitcoin's price stands still, simply because other coins have gained or lost value.
Say bitcoin stays at about $84,000 for a week while ether jumps 20% and every other coin stays flat. Bitcoin's market cap has not changed, but the total has grown by the extra value of ether. With ether at about 11% of the market and bitcoin at about 59.9%, that move alone would take bitcoin dominance to about 58.6%, with no bitcoin bought or sold (source: TradingView).
That is the key to reading the number. A falling dominance can mean bitcoin is weak, or it can mean other coins are strong while bitcoin does nothing. Dominance only compares the slices, which is why bitcoin's own price belongs on the screen beside it.
How bitcoin dominance is calculated
Bitcoin dominance equals bitcoin's market cap divided by the total crypto market cap, multiplied by 100. A company's market cap is its share price multiplied by the number of shares outstanding (source: Investopedia), and a coin's works the same way, with the coins in circulation in place of shares. Adding up every coin's market cap gives the total for the whole market. Both numbers change every second, so dominance does too.
Here is the calculation with TradingView's figures from 5.12AM UTC on October 12, 2026. Bitcoin's market cap was about $1.69 trillion. The total market cap of the 125 largest coins, which is what TradingView counts, was about $2.82 trillion (source: TradingView). Divide the first by the second and multiply by 100:
$1.69 trillion ÷ $2.82 trillion × 100 = 59.9%
That matches the BTC.D reading of 59.93% TradingView showed at that moment. With bitcoin near 84,175 USDT on BloFin's BTCUSDT Perpetual and about 20.1 million coins in circulation, a market cap of roughly $1.69 trillion is what you would expect (source: CoinGecko market data).
The same TradingView readings show how the rest of the market splits up: bitcoin held 59.93%, ether 11.11%, stablecoins such as USDT and USDC 10.04%, and every other coin 18.92% (source: TradingView).
The bottom half of the fraction matters as much as the top. Keep bitcoin's $1.69 trillion fixed and measure it against a bigger total, such as CoinPaprika's $2.98 trillion, and the same bitcoin is worth only 56.73% of the market on CoinPaprika's own figures (source: CoinPaprika). That single fact explains most of the confusion around this number.
What is bitcoin dominance today?
Bitcoin dominance is just under 60% on most major data sites (source: TradingView) (source: CoinMarketCap), and as low as 56.7% on CoinPaprika (source: CoinPaprika). In readings taken within five minutes of each other, at the same moment as the calculation above, every provider valued bitcoin itself at about $1.69 trillion. The gap came almost entirely from how large each one measured the whole market to be, as each provider's own published figures show:
Data provider | Time of reading (UTC) | Bitcoin market cap | Total crypto market cap | Bitcoin dominance |
|---|---|---|---|---|
TradingView | 5.12AM | $1.69 trillion | $2.82 trillion | 59.93% |
CoinGecko (data feed) | 5.10AM | $1.69 trillion | $2.83 trillion | 59.67% |
CoinMarketCap | 5.08AM | $1.69 trillion | $2.85 trillion | 59.35% |
CoinPaprika | 5.09AM | $1.69 trillion | $2.98 trillion | 56.73% |
Each figure is the provider's own reading at the time shown (source: TradingView) (source: CoinMarketCap) (source: CoinPaprika), with CoinGecko's taken from its public data feed (source: CoinGecko API). CoinGecko's website gave two more numbers within minutes: 58.23% on its main charts page, against a total of $2.899 trillion (source: CoinGecko charts), and 57.79% on its dominance chart (source: CoinGecko). Even one provider can show different numbers on different pages.
Dominance moves slowly on a quiet day. TradingView's reading slipped only from 59.98% to 59.93% between 3.06AM and 5.12AM UTC that morning (source: TradingView). Live readings will have moved since, so check one provider's chart for the current figure.
Why bitcoin dominance is different on every website
Bitcoin dominance differs between websites because each one adds up a different "total crypto market". They agree closely on bitcoin's value. But they count different coins, treat stablecoins and tokenized assets differently, take supply figures from different places, and update at different moments. A larger total always produces a smaller bitcoin share.
Which coins are counted. This is the biggest cause, because TradingView's total covers only the 125 largest cryptocurrencies, which leaves out thousands of small tokens and gives the highest bitcoin share of the four (source: TradingView support). CoinGecko adds up the market cap of every project it tracks (source: CoinGecko methodology). CoinPaprika's total covered about 11,300 coins and was the widest of the four (source: CoinPaprika).
What counts as crypto. CoinMarketCap's total includes tokens and stablecoins as well as cryptocurrencies (source: CoinMarketCap). Some providers also count tokenized real-world assets, or tokens that stand for other coins, which makes the total bigger again.
Where supply figures come from. Every market cap is price times circulating supply. Providers collect supply figures from token teams and check them in their own way, so the same coin can carry a slightly different value on each site (source: CoinGecko methodology).
When the reading is taken. CoinMarketCap's reading came about four minutes before TradingView's. On a quiet morning that barely matters, but in a fast-moving market the gap between two readings taken minutes apart can be wider.
Say you check TradingView and see 59.9%, then read a post quoting 56.7%. Before you decide dominance has crashed, check the source. If the post used CoinPaprika, both numbers describe the same market at the same moment, measured against two different totals.
Why the difference matters
A gap of three points sounds small, but it changes what people think the market is doing. Traders often talk about dominance "breaking" a level such as 58% or 60%. In the readings above, bitcoin's share was above 59% on TradingView, CoinGecko's data feed and CoinMarketCap, but below 57% on CoinPaprika (source: TradingView) (source: CoinPaprika). The same "break" could be true on one site and false on another.
It also means you should never compare a number from one provider with a number from another. A level on your TradingView chart and a figure quoted in a news story may come from different sources, so a move between them can be an illusion. Even history is affected. Bitcoin's record low was 32.44% on CoinMarketCap's daily records, set on January 14, 2018 (source: CoinMarketCap). CoinGecko's records put it at 34.67%, a day earlier (source: CoinGecko).
The practical rule is to pick one provider and stick with it. Watch the direction of that provider's line over weeks, and treat any exact level as approximate. When an article or post quotes a dominance figure, check which site it came from before you compare it with your own chart.
How stablecoins affect bitcoin dominance
Stablecoins such as USDT and USDC make up about 10% of the total crypto market cap (source: TradingView). Because they are counted in the total, they pull bitcoin's share down. Take them out and bitcoin's share of the remaining market rises from 59.9% to about 66.6%.
Stablecoins matter more than they used to, because their combined supply is about $313 billion, close to its level a year ago (source: DefiLlama). The rest of the market fell over that year, so the stablecoin slice grew from 6.79% of CoinGecko's total at the start of October 2025 to about 10% (source: CoinGecko). That alone holds bitcoin dominance down, even if nobody sells a single bitcoin. If stablecoins are new to you, each one is designed to stay at about $1.
Measuring bitcoin's share with stablecoins removed gives a cleaner picture of how bitcoin is doing against coins whose prices actually move. Stablecoin supply can then be followed on its own, as a measure of how much money is held in dollar tokens.
USDT dominance, shown as USDT.D on TradingView, is Tether's own share of the market, and it was 6.52% in the same readings (source: TradingView). Because USDT holds its dollar value, its share tends to rise when the rest of the market falls and shrink when prices rally. Read beside BTC.D, it gives a rough gauge of how much of the market is parked in Tether.
How to read the bitcoin dominance chart
The bitcoin dominance chart shows bitcoin's share of the market over time, with the percentage on the vertical axis and dates along the bottom. On TradingView it appears under the symbol BTC.D (source: TradingView). A rising line means bitcoin is taking a bigger slice; a falling line means other coins are.
You can show the chart as a line or as candles and choose the time frame. Short time frames are noisy, because dominance can swing by a few tenths of a point in a day. A weekly chart is easier to read, since it shows whether money has been moving toward bitcoin or away from it for months at a time.
The chart only makes sense next to bitcoin's price. The same move in dominance can mean very different things depending on whether the whole market is rising or falling. Each example uses CoinMarketCap's daily dominance readings (source: CoinMarketCap). Bitcoin's price changes are FRED's daily closes (source: FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis), except in October 2026, where the move runs from the intraday high on October 2 to the low on October 8 on BloFin's BTCUSDT Perpetual (source: BloFin).
Bitcoin's price | Bitcoin dominance | What it usually means | Real example |
|---|---|---|---|
Falling | Falling | Money is leaving bitcoin, often for stablecoins or a few other coins | April 13 to May 19, 2021: bitcoin down about 42%, dominance from 53.8% to 39.3% |
Rising | Rising | Money is going into bitcoin faster than into other coins | January 19 to November 21, 2024: bitcoin up about 138%, dominance from 49.6% to 60.1% (source: CoinMarketCap) |
Rising | Falling | Other coins are rising faster than bitcoin | June 27 to August 14, 2025: bitcoin up about 9%, dominance from 65.1% to 58.8% (source: CoinMarketCap) |
Falling | Rising | Other coins are falling faster than bitcoin | October 1 to 8, 2026: bitcoin down 7.9% from its October 2 high to its October 8 low, dominance from 58.6% to 59.1% |
To see these combinations as they happen, keep the BTCUSDT Perpetual chart open beside BTC.D on TradingView. Watch whether the two lines move together or apart over a week or more.
What high or rising bitcoin dominance means
High and rising are two different things: high is a level, such as the 64% to 65% bitcoin reached in June 2025 (source: CoinGecko) (source: CoinMarketCap). Rising is a direction, and dominance can rise from a low level too, as it did through 2024 from about 50%.
Since 2017, CoinMarketCap's daily figure has dropped below 40% only in 2017 and 2018 and from 2021 to 2023, bottoming at 32.4% in January 2018 (source: CoinMarketCap). Since 2018 it has topped 65% only between mid-2019 and January 2021, when it peaked at 71.8%, and on a single day in June 2025 (source: CoinMarketCap). A reading near 59% therefore sits much closer to past highs than to past lows.
Rising dominance usually means investors prefer bitcoin over other coins. That happens when big buyers such as funds focus on bitcoin, when traders cut riskier bets and sell small coins first, or when altcoins simply fall faster in a sell-off. Through 2024, dominance and bitcoin's price rose together, which is what a bitcoin-led market looks like.
For someone holding altcoins, a steady rise is worth noticing. It means those coins are losing ground to bitcoin, even in a month when their prices go up. Checking your coin's own pair against bitcoin shows whether that is happening to your holdings.
A high, steady level suggests the market treats bitcoin as the safest part of crypto. It does not say whether bitcoin's price will go up or down. In October 2026 dominance rose while bitcoin fell, so a rising line is no promise of rising prices.
What low or falling bitcoin dominance means
Low or falling dominance means other coins are taking a bigger share. The deepest falls came in rushes into altcoins. These were the 2017 boom in new token sales, the 2021 run in ether and other coins, and a shorter ether rally in mid-2025 (source: CoinMarketCap). In those periods, money moved toward smaller and more speculative coins.
Falling dominance is not always good news for altcoins, though. It can also fall when the whole market drops and stablecoins, which hold their value, take a bigger slice. Stablecoins' share of CoinGecko's total reached 13.66% on July 1, 2026, when prices were near their lows, and dominance on that site was about 55% at the time (source: CoinGecko).
For someone holding only bitcoin, falling dominance is less alarming than it sounds: in the mid-2025 ether rally, bitcoin's price still rose while its share fell, because ether rose faster.
So check what is taking bitcoin's share. If altcoin prices are climbing, falling dominance points to altcoin strength. If stablecoins are growing while prices fall, it points to investors moving into cash instead.
What moves bitcoin dominance
Five things move bitcoin dominance most: money flowing into bitcoin through funds, sell-offs that hit small coins hardest, rushes into altcoins, changes in stablecoin supply, and changes to which coins get counted. Each one changes either bitcoin's market cap or the total, and dominance moves with the ratio between them.
Bitcoin funds and big buyers. The SEC approved the first US spot bitcoin exchange-traded products on January 10, 2024 (source: US Securities and Exchange Commission). Dominance first dipped to about 49.6% on January 19, then climbed to about 60% by late November 2024 (source: CoinMarketCap). The data shows the timing, not that the funds alone caused the climb. How bitcoin ETF flows work explains how that money reaches the market.
Sell-offs. When traders cut risk, they usually sell smaller coins first, because those coins have fewer buyers waiting. In the October 2026 sell-off, bitcoin fell about 8% on BloFin from its October 2 high to its October 8 low, while ether, XRP, Solana and dogecoin fell 13% to 17%, and bitcoin's share rose. CoinDesk reported that dollar depth in altcoin markets had been falling since early 2025, which leaves them more exposed (source: CoinDesk). Why crypto is crashing covers that sell-off coin by coin.
Altcoin rushes. When traders chase new coins, the total grows faster than bitcoin and dominance falls.
Stablecoin supply. New stablecoins add to the total without adding to bitcoin. With supply around $313 billion, every extra $28 billion of stablecoins adds about one point to their share of a $2.8 trillion market, taking roughly half a point off bitcoin's.
What gets counted. When a big new token is listed, or a provider starts counting a new type of token, the total grows and bitcoin's share falls, even though nothing about bitcoin changed. Coins with only a small part of their supply in circulation can also show a large market cap that swells the total for a while.
Bitcoin dominance history
Bitcoin dominance has fallen from about 94% when daily records began in April 2013 to about 59%, with large swings in between (source: CoinMarketCap). Its share has shrunk as other coins and stablecoins have grown. Here are the main turning points on the two providers with daily records back to 2013:
Date | What happened | CoinMarketCap | CoinGecko |
|---|---|---|---|
April 2013 | First daily records | 94.2% | 94.5% |
January 2018 | Record low, at the end of the 2017 token boom | 32.4% (January 14) | 34.7% (January 13) |
January 3, 2021 | Highest since 2017 | 71.8% (source: CoinMarketCap) | 71.8% |
May 19, 2021 | Low of the 2021 altcoin rally | 39.3% | 38.8% |
September 9, 2022 | Lowest since 2018 | 37.7% | 37.1% |
June 27, 2025 | Highest of the current cycle | 65.1% | 64.1% |
October 2026 | Latest reading | 59.4% | 57.8% |
Both providers' daily records show the same broad shape, roughly a point or two apart (source: CoinMarketCap) (source: CoinGecko). The long decline reflects a market that has grown up around bitcoin. Ether, stablecoins and many other coins now hold real value of their own, so a return to the 90% shares of the early years would need most of that value to disappear.
In the last two big cycles, dominance climbed while bitcoin led the early part of the run, to about 91.7% in late 2015 and 71.8% in January 2021. It then fell sharply as money spread into altcoins, in 2017 and again in 2021 (source: CoinMarketCap). That is a pattern in past data, not a rule: when bitcoin set its record price in early October 2025, dominance was still about 58.6% on CoinMarketCap. Crypto market cycles explains how those phases are usually described.
Bitcoin dominance in 2026, month by month
Bitcoin dominance has stayed in a narrow band in 2026, between about 57.3% and 60.6% on CoinMarketCap (source: CoinMarketCap). On CoinGecko the band was about 55% to 59% (source: CoinGecko). Both providers had their highest readings in early May. CoinMarketCap's lowest came in early June and CoinGecko's at the end of June. Their figures run in the same direction, usually about two points apart:
Month (2026) | CoinMarketCap, first day | CoinMarketCap, last day | CoinGecko, first day | CoinGecko, last day |
|---|---|---|---|---|
January | 58.99% | 59.17% | 55.62% | 57.20% |
February | 59.07% | 57.98% | 57.38% | 55.71% |
March | 58.15% | 58.00% | 56.33% | 55.45% |
April | 58.20% | 59.84% (source: CoinMarketCap) | 55.57% | 57.96% |
May | 60.04% | 59.30% | 58.08% | 57.08% |
June | 59.23% | 57.90% | 57.11% | 55.44% |
July | 57.66% | 58.80% | 55.24% | 56.45% |
August | 58.41% | 59.70% | 56.06% | 57.53% |
September | 59.71% | 58.72% | 57.54% | 56.66% |
October (to the 12th) | 58.63% | 59.41% | 56.54% | 57.79% |
The CoinMarketCap figures are its readings at midnight UTC on each date (source: CoinMarketCap), and the CoinGecko figures come from the daily series behind its dominance chart (source: CoinGecko).
Bitcoin dominance and altcoin season
Altcoin season is a stretch when most large altcoins rise faster than bitcoin. Blockchaincenter's index calls it altcoin season when at least 75% of the top 50 coins beat bitcoin over 90 days (source: Blockchaincenter). CoinMarketCap's index uses the top 100 coins instead (source: CoinMarketCap altcoin season index). Both leave out stablecoins and wrapped tokens.
In the same morning readings, Blockchaincenter's index stood at 59 and CoinMarketCap's at 65, a point below its 12-month high (source: Blockchaincenter) (source: CoinMarketCap). Neither had reached altcoin season. Bitcoin dominance barely moved over the same months, and the reason is useful. The altcoin season indexes count how many coins beat bitcoin, while dominance weighs coins by size.
Say you see 40 of the top 50 coins beat bitcoin over 90 days, but most of them are small. The altcoin season index jumps, yet bitcoin's share barely changes, because those 40 coins together are worth far less than bitcoin. Dominance only falls hard when big coins such as ether outrun bitcoin.
Two more gauges help: TOTAL2 on TradingView is the total market cap of the top 125 coins minus bitcoin, and it was about $1.13 trillion in the same readings (source: TradingView support) (source: TradingView). The ETH/BTC ratio shows how ether is doing against bitcoin directly; one ether buys about 0.0305 BTC on BloFin. If you hold smaller coins, how to size altcoins in a portfolio covers how much to keep in them.
Limits of bitcoin dominance
Bitcoin dominance is a ratio, so it can rise while bitcoin's price falls and fall while bitcoin's price rises. TradingView's own description says a decline in dominance does not, as a single metric, indicate a price decline or growth (source: TradingView). Read it as a description of where money sits, not as a signal to buy or sell.
It also says nothing about quality or liquidity. A coin with few tokens in circulation can show a huge market cap that would shrink fast if holders tried to sell, and that value still counts in the total. Dominance cannot tell you whether an altcoin rally is broad and healthy or driven by a handful of thinly traded tokens.
Say you see a new token list with only 5% of its supply trading, at a price that values it at $30 billion. The total market grows by $30 billion overnight and bitcoin's share drops by more than half a point, even though very little money actually changed hands.
Finally, it is only as good as the provider behind it, and the providers disagree. For using dominance as a trading signal, correlation trading in crypto goes further, and crypto portfolio correlation covers what it means for a diversified portfolio.
How to use bitcoin dominance when trading on BloFin
Use bitcoin dominance as context, alongside bitcoin's price, the total market cap and the ETH/BTC ratio, and always from one provider. Rising dominance with a rising bitcoin price points to bitcoin leading. Falling dominance with rising altcoin prices points to money spreading out. Neither tells you where prices will go next.
BloFin also lists a BTCDOMUSDT Perpetual, with up to 20x leverage. Its price is an index in points, currently about 5,350, not the dominance percentage. It rose about 15% in 2026 while CoinMarketCap's dominance figure moved by only a fraction of a point (source: CoinMarketCap), so the two do not move one for one. Read the contract details on its trading page before you trade it.
Size every position from your stop, whatever you trade. Say you have 800 USDT and will risk 1.5%, or 12 USDT, on a trade. If your stop sits 6% from your entry, your position can be no larger than 200 USDT, because 6% of 200 is 12. Leverage magnifies losses as well as gains, so read how liquidation works before you use it.
If you would rather follow an experienced trader, BloFin's copy trading covers the BTCUSDT, ETHUSDT and BTCDOMUSDT perpetuals, and you decide how much of your money each copied trader can use. Read how to copy trade on BloFin first.
Looking to trade BTC or bitcoin dominance? To get started, you'll need to first create a BloFin account, fund your account with cryptocurrency, and navigate to the BTC/USDT Spot trading page, BTC/USDC Spot trading page, BTCUSDT Perpetual page, BTCUSD Perpetual page or BTCDOMUSDT Perpetual page, or browse the lead traders you can copy on BTC.
Frequently asked questions
Is bitcoin dominance declining?
Over the past year it has barely moved: CoinMarketCap put it at 59.84% on October 12, 2025, and at 59.41% a year later (source: CoinMarketCap). TradingView showed a fall of less than 1% in relative terms over the same twelve months (source: TradingView). It sits about six points below its June 2025 peak on both CoinMarketCap and CoinGecko (source: CoinMarketCap) (source: CoinGecko).
At what bitcoin dominance does altcoin season start?
There is no fixed level, because altcoin season depends on how altcoins perform against bitcoin, not on one dominance number. Past rallies started from very different places, as the two biggest show. In 2017, dominance fell from 87.35% on January 1 to 45.65% on June 1. In 2021 it fell from 70.45% on January 1 to 42.11% on June 1 (source: CoinMarketCap). Both rallies began with dominance high, and it fell by 28 to 42 points within five months.
What is ETH dominance?
ETH dominance is ether's share of the total crypto market cap, calculated the same way as bitcoin's. On CoinMarketCap it stood at 20.05% at the start of 2022, dropped to 8.93% on June 27, 2025, and recovered to 14.10% by September 1, 2025 during ether's rally (source: CoinMarketCap). That swing shows how quickly money can move between the two largest coins.
Does bitcoin dominance count staked or tokenized assets?
It depends on the provider, and the difference can be large. CoinGecko's data feed counts stETH, Lido's staked-ether token, as about 0.9% of the market, which partly counts ether's value twice (source: CoinGecko API). CoinGecko also ranks a tokenized home-equity loan product worth about $25 billion among its ten largest assets (source: CoinGecko market data), while CoinMarketCap's top 15 does not list it at all (source: CoinMarketCap).
What was bitcoin's highest dominance?
Bitcoin's highest recorded dominance came in the early years, when it faced few rivals. CoinMarketCap's daily records peaked at 96.63% on November 18, 2013 (source: CoinMarketCap). CoinGecko's peaked at 97.24% on November 10, 2013, leaving out a one-day data spike that May (source: CoinGecko).
Researched and written by the BloFin Academy editorial team with AI-assisted drafting. All facts independently verified. Primary sources include TradingView, CoinGecko, CoinMarketCap, CoinPaprika, FRED (Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis), the US Securities and Exchange Commission, DefiLlama, Blockchaincenter, Investopedia, CoinDesk and BloFin, current as of October 12, 2026.
Nothing in this article constitutes financial advice, and nothing in it is a recommendation to buy, sell or hold bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency. Bitcoin dominance figures differ between data providers, so a level that looks broken on one site may be intact on another, and a trade based on one provider's number can go wrong for that reason alone. Leveraged positions, including on the BTCDOMUSDT Perpetual, can be liquidated, losing all the margin behind them. BloFin services are not available in restricted locations, including the United States. Past performance does not indicate future results. Do your own research and consider your risk tolerance before you trade on BloFin.