Bitcoin Reclaims Over 50% Market Dominance Following BlackRock ETF Filing

Bitcoin’s market capitalization is once again larger than that of all other cryptocurrencies combined, according to data from TradingView. 

The site’s BTC dominance metric rose above 50% on Monday for the first time since May 2021, when Bitcoin’s price plummeted after China announced a total ban on crypto mining, and Tesla partly distanced itself from the asset over environmental concerns. 

Bitcoin dominance last neared the 50% mark in June 2022 as the entire crypto market cratered on news of persistently high inflation in the United States, leading to aggressive monetary tightening from the Federal Reserve.

While Bitcoin dropped dramatically at the time, coins like Ethereum (ETH) dropped harder, with the ETH/BTC pair falling to a ratio of just 0.05.

A similar decline took place this month as ETH/BTC fell from 0.07 on June 6 to 0.064 at writing time. 

Other top altcoins—including Cardano (ADA), Solana (SOL), and Polygon (MATIC)—also suffered substantially relative to Bitcoin following a US regulator’s lawsuit against Coinbase alleging that all three coins are unregistered securities. Meanwhile, SEC chairman Gary Gensler has again clarified that he views Bitcoin as a commodity. 

In a lawsuit against Binance, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) called the exchange’s native token BNB a security. The token—the fourth largest crypto by market cap—has plummeted 20% since the start of the month.

The Bitcoin dominance metric has often been criticized for under-representing Bitcoin’s true market share by including stablecoins within its calculations, which are effectively dollars trading on the blockchain. However, even the stablecoin market has receded this year after Paxos was forced by the SEC to start winding down BUSD in February, erasing billions of dollars in tokens from circulation.

Last Tuesday, MicroStrategy’s executive chairman Michael Saylor predicted that Bitcoin dominance will rise above 80% as regulators continue clamping down on other digital assets.

Bitcoin is up 6% since last week after BlackRock filed for a Bitcoin Spot ETF, for which investors are optimistic may receive unique approval from the SEC.