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It's an interesting time in the crypto world. Bitcoin dominance has been plummeting in the past few months. In January, Bitcoin made up 87% of all crypto curre
by joshfraser 9y ago
It's an interesting time in the crypto world. Bitcoin dominance has been plummeting in the past few months. In January, Bitcoin made up 87% of all crypto currency. Today it's 60%. Most of the movement has been to ETH, but all of the alt-coins have benefited from the movement. Alt-coins now have a 15b market cap!
http://coinmarketcap.com/charts/#btc-percentage http://coinmarketcap.com/charts/#btc-percentage
- kordless 9y ago> Bitcoin dominance has been plummeting in the past few months. Bitcoin's price is at an all time high. Please clarify what "dominance" means from your perspective.
- clishem 9y agoHe already did. Market share of cryptocurrencies.
- kakarot 9y agoThey clarified with context in the very next sentence. They were talking about market share. They even provided a link.
- joshfraser 9y agoTrue. In the crypto world, BTC dominance refers to the percentage of market cap that is tied up in BTC versus ETH and every other alt-coin. There's roughly a 36 billion dollar market cap of all crypto currencies right now. 60% of that is in BTC. 40% is in Ethereum, Ripple, Litecoin, etc.
- kordless 9y agoYou stated Bitcoin dominance plummeted. My observation is Bitcoin's dominance has increased, by way of it's increase in market cap compared to the fiat by which it is measured, US dollars. Bitcoin's overall value, like any startup or company, is determined by far more than it's comparative value to all other cryptocurrencies, who's numbers are increasing with Bitcoin's value. It's like saying, because new startups are being formed at an increasing rate to write mobile apps, Apple's "dominance" in the market is falling. That would be a flawed argument with Apple, and it's a flawed argument with Bitcoin. That is especially true given Ethereum doesn't have a viable use-case anyone is using it for right now, and most of the trading is simply speculation of future value, which isn't really value, or a right to "dominance", whatever that means when applied to speculation. And yes, people can cherry pick numbers to rationalize their arguments, and then vote down people who they "prove" to be "wrong" when the person is just asking to clarify what something means because there is CLEARLY more going on here than what meets the eye. I'm growing bored of the HN audience's dogma.
- dane-pgp 9y agoOne obvious reason for the sudden move away from bitcoin is the exponentially increasing fees caused by the artificially limited block size. https://i.imgur.com/7BXFyWX.jpg https://i.imgur.com/7BXFyWX.jpg Rather than paying the high fees of bitcoin, people are making their transactions in other currencies instead. Unsurprisingly, the currencies that allow more transactions are more economically useful, so their value edges up.
- tboyd47 9y agoHypothesis: When the Bitcoin ETH was rejected, altcoins went from plan B to plan A for cryptocurrency speculators.