Is Bitcoin Becoming Less Popular Compared to Other Cryptocurrencies?
Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) is the most popular cryptocurrency in the world, with its name almost synonymous with crypto itself. But over the years, the crypto world has grown in size, and there are more digital currencies available. Let's look at just how popular Bitcoin is right now, and whether or not it has become less prominent over the past year.
Coin dominance is an effective way to gauge popularity
A key metric in crypto is how dominant a coin is compared to the entire crypto market. The calculation is simple: Take a cryptocurrency's market cap and divide it by the total market cap of all crypto.
Bitcoin, for example, has a market cap of around $760 billion. According to CoinMarketCap, the total crypto market has a value of $1.5 trillion, which would put Bitcoin's dominance percentage at approximately 50.7%.
This means it makes up a little more than half of the entire crypto market's total valuation. Ethereum, the next largest coin, has a market cap of $265 billion, putting its dominance percentage at 17.7%. No other cryptocurrency even comes close to a 10% dominance score today.
How Bitcoin's dominance has changed over the past year
The dominance percentage can and will change often, depending on not just the price of Bitcoin itself but other cryptocurrencies as well. Here's a breakdown of Bitcoin's dominance percentage at the start of each month, going back to January 2023:
Month
BTC Dominance %
January 2023 38%
February 2023 41%
March 2023 40%
April 2023 45%
May 2023 45%
June 2023 44%
July 2023 48%
August 2023 47%
September 2023 46%
October 2023 46%
November 2023 51%
December 2023 50%
January 2024 48%
Data source: coingecko.com.
What's interesting to note is that Bitcoin's popularity actually increased over the course of the past year. A big part of that is likely due to the growing anticipation of the approval of several spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs), which finally took place earlier this month. Investors were expecting an uptick in Bitcoin's price due to the approvals, which may have also led to more people buying Bitcoin, hoping to cash in on the rising price.
