Bitcoin Dominance Chart (BTC.D)
Bitcoin dominance is the share of the entire crypto market cap sitting in BTC. Traders watch it because falling dominance in a rising market is the classic signature of an altcoin rotation — and rising dominance in a falling market is the signature of a flight to safety.
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BTC.D over time
Reconstructed from top-30 market caps and calibrated to today's published dominance — see the method below.
Market composition now
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How to read Bitcoin dominance
Dominance is a ratio, and ratios move for two reasons: the numerator changed, or the denominator did. That sounds obvious, but it is where most readings go wrong. BTC.D can fall while Bitcoin rallies hard, simply because altcoins rallied harder. It can rise during a crash because alts fell further.
So always read it as a pair with price:
- Price up, dominance up — early-cycle. New capital is entering through Bitcoin.
- Price up, dominance down — the rotation. Capital is moving down the risk curve into alts. Cross-check with the altcoin season index.
- Price down, dominance up — risk-off. Alts are being sold harder than BTC.
- Price down, dominance down — unusual, and normally driven by a specific large-cap alt event rather than a market-wide theme.
The stablecoin caveat
Total market capitalisation includes stablecoins, so a large USDT mint raises the denominator and pushes Bitcoin dominance down without a single BTC changing hands. In periods of heavy stablecoin issuance this can account for a meaningful part of a dominance decline. Some traders prefer a stablecoin-adjusted measure:
adjusted dominance = BTC cap / (total cap − stablecoin cap)
The breakdown chart on this page shows the stablecoin share directly, so you can make that adjustment yourself.
How this page builds the series
Live dominance comes straight from CoinGecko's global endpoint. The history is reconstructed, because no free source publishes it: circulating supply for the top 30 assets is multiplied by daily Binance closes to produce a market-cap series for each, Bitcoin's share is computed for every day, and the resulting series is scaled by one constant so its final point equals today's published figure. Supply is held constant across the window — accurate to well under a percent for large caps over a year, and the calibration absorbs the rest.
Frequently asked questions
What is Bitcoin dominance today?
The live figure is at the top of this page and refreshes every three minutes. Bitcoin dominance, often written BTC.D, is Bitcoin's market capitalisation divided by the market capitalisation of all cryptocurrencies, expressed as a percentage.
What does rising Bitcoin dominance mean?
It depends entirely on what price is doing at the same time. Rising dominance in a falling market is a flight to safety — capital leaving altcoins faster than it leaves Bitcoin. Rising dominance in a rising market usually marks the early phase of a cycle, when new money arrives through Bitcoin first. Falling dominance in a rising market is the classic altcoin rotation. Falling dominance in a falling market is rare and usually driven by one large alt-specific event.
What is a high or low BTC dominance?
Bitcoin dominance has ranged from above 95% in the early years to under 35% at the peak of the 2017–18 altcoin mania. Since 2019 it has mostly oscillated between roughly 38% and 65%. Rather than fixed thresholds, watch the direction and the slope — a sustained multi-week trend matters far more than any single reading.
Does stablecoin supply distort dominance?
Yes, materially. Stablecoins are counted in total market capitalisation, so when billions of dollars are minted into USDT or USDC, total market cap rises and Bitcoin dominance mechanically falls, even if nothing was bought or sold. That is why we plot stablecoin dominance alongside BTC.D — see the stablecoin dashboard for the full series.
How do you reconstruct the dominance history?
No free API publishes a historical total-market-cap series. We rebuild it: circulating supply for each of the top 30 assets is taken from CoinGecko, multiplied by that asset's daily closing price from Binance to give a market-cap series, and Bitcoin's share of the total is calculated day by day. The finished series is then scaled by a single constant so its last point matches CoinGecko's published live dominance, which absorbs both supply drift and the long tail we do not fetch. The shape is reliable; treat individual historical points as close approximations rather than exact figures. Full detail on the methodology page.