Altcoin Season Begins as BTC Dominance Plummets

The fabled altcoin season may finally be rearing its head, as Ethereum and altcoins lead the market while BTC dominance takes a tumble.

ETH is now up nearly 14% on the week, while BTC is up just 4% despite the monumental $100,000 level finally being breached. Meanwhile, BTC.D, or Bitcoin dominance, has fallen from 61% to 55% over the last two weeks, while the total crypto market capitalization has surged to new highs.

This divergence between BTC and the rest of the market is being led not only by ETH, but by DeFi tokens in particular, including HYPE, which is up 330% over the last week, AAVE, which is up 43%, and ONDO, which is up 47%.

The gap between BTC and altcoins widened further after a massive wipeout of Bitcoin leverage on Dec. 5, resulting in over $200m of leveraged longs being liquidated in just 30 minutes.

BTC plummeted from $99,000 to $91,000 in less than an hour, and some traders are hypothesizing that it could have been the largest liquidation event in Bitcoin’s history.

However, unlike most major liquidation cascades, altcoins hardly budged during BTC’s flash crash, and as a result, the total crypto market capitalization is up another 1.6% today, to an all-time high of $3.88 trillion.