According to data from TradingView, Bitcoin dominance rate, the ratio between the market capitalization of Bitcoin to the total market cap of the entire cryptocurrency market, has surpassed 51% on Oct 10, nearing a two-year high of 52% at the end of June 2023. The market cap of BTC is $534 billion and that of Ethereum (ETH) is $188 billion. These two cryptocurrencies account for 70% of the crypto market value.
Bitcoin price’s surge obviously outperformed Ethereum and many other major altcoins since the beginning of the year. Although Bitcoin has not seen much volatility over the past 7 days, it has gained 66% year to date. Meanwhile, ETH has gained only 32% and even dropped nearly 6% this week. BTC and ETH are trading around $27,082 and $1,559 on CoinMarketCap.
According to André Dragosch, Head of Research at Deutsche Digital Assets, one of the reasons Bitcoin outperformed ETH and other altcoins is the cautious sentiment of institutional investors with the new Ethereum Futures ETF, which just rolled out in the US last week. There was only $0.9 million poured into the Ethereum ETF last week while the Bitcoin ETF reached $85.4 million, Dragosch added.
Bitcoin is also capable of handling smart contract calculations that the Ethereum network is doing very well. In other words, all altcoin utilities can be enabled on the Bitcoin blockchain.