Bitcoin Dominance Soars as These Altcoins Bleed Out (Weekend Watch)

Bitcoin faced enhanced volatility on Friday as well, dumping in minutes to $42,600 before jumping to $44,400 and ultimately settling below $44,000.

Many altcoins have charted massive price declines over the past 24 hours, with AVAX, ADA, SOL, and LINK leading this adverse trend.

Dominance on the Rise: Bitcoin

Although it has been less than a week since the start of the new year, BTC has already recorded several massive price movements in either direction. It all started on Tuesday with a surge from $42,500 to a 21-month peak at almost $46,000.

Then came reports that the SEC plans to reject all pending ETF proposals, which sent the primary cryptocurrency south hard. In a matter of minutes, the asset slumped by nearly five grand to $41,500.

The bulls intercepted the move at this point, and BTC began its recovery. This culminated in a price surge to $44,800 on Friday, but the asset couldn’t maintain its run and slipped back down to $42,500 on a couple of occasions.

Another leg up followed, and Bitcoin now trades just inches below $44,000 after failing to overcome that level decisively. Its market capitalization has slipped below $860 billion, but its dominance over the altcoins has skyrocketed to over 52% on CMC. The metric was below 50% at the start of the year.

Altcoins Face Bloodbath

Most altcoins were riding high in the past few days after the Wednesday crash, but the market outlook is entirely different now. Solana, Cardano, Avalanche, and Chainlink lead the race in terms of daily losses, as all of them are down by 5-8%. As a result, SOL is under $100, ADA is close to breaking below $0.5, AVAX is at $35, and LINK is beneath $15.

The rest of the larger-cap alts are also in the red, including declines from ETH, BNB, DOGE, XRP, MATIC, TRX, and TON. LDO is the only exception from the top 36 alts, with a notable increase of 9% that has pushed it to $3.33.

The total crypto market cap has declined by over $30 billion overnight and is down to $1.640 trillion on CMC.