Bitcoin Dominance Drops to Historic Low
At press time, the total value of the more than 1,300 publicly traded cryptocurrencies, as listed by data CoinMarketCap, set a new all-time high of $667 billion. As such, it's the latest sign that the entire cryptocurrency market has recovered from a correction on Dec. 22, when the market plunged more than 30 percent from around $648 billion to $422 billion.
On Tuesday, its market cap was $231.8 billion, or around 36.1 percent of the total value of all cryptocurrencies. This is the lowest share of the market that bitcoin has had in its history. Bitcoin's previous low was 37.6 percent in June. By contrast, at the start of 2017, its market share stood at over 80 percent.
Bitcoin rallied by more than 1,300 percent in 2017. In December, it hit a record high of $19,783.21 before a sharp sell-off saw it plunge, closing the year at $13,889.99, according to CoinDesk's bitcoin price index, which tracks prices from digital currency exchanges Bitstamp, Coinbase, itBit and Bitfinex.
Investors appear to be taking a breather from bitcoin for now and looking at alternative cryptocurrencies.