Altcoins Take The Reins After Bitcoin Market Dominance Hits Three Year Low

Bitcoin’s market dominance fell to a three-year low of 40.05% after the weekend’s Musk drama saw its price fall back under $45,000.

What Happened: Crypto Twitter blamed the Tesla Inc TSLA CEO for the selloff, alleging his tweets hinting at an imminent Bitcoin selloff by Tesla caused a large number of market participants to panic sell their own share of the digital asset.

Indeed

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 16, 2021

While Bitcoin BTC/USD isn’t the only cryptocurrency that was subject to the weekend’s adverse price movements, altcoins now accounted for the majority of the market, reaching a collective market cap of $1.2 trillion.

Ethereum’s market dominance stood at a three-year high of over 19%, while others like Binance Coin (BNB) and Cardano (ADA) accounted for over 3% each.

Why It Matters: Since September 2018, Bitcoin has accounted for over 50% of the crypto market, and during the peak of the asset’s bull run between December 2020 and March 2021, dominance reached a high of 70%.

In fact, a few large-cap altcoins even managed new all-time highs amidst the market-wide selloff. One of these coins was Cardano (ADA), which reached a high of $2.42 over the weekend. ADA’s 24-hour losses were also less significant than other coins, as it remained around $2.19 at press time despite only breach the two-dollar mark on Saturday.

Solana (SOL) was another altcoin that rose to a new high, as it breached $52.50 earlier today. The token’s 24-hour trading volume was up by 227% to $2.56 billion at the time of writing.

“The Bitcoin dominance is still falling,” wrote crypto trader “The Moon” on Twitter. “The alt season is not over yet. But my gut feeling is that the end is near!”