Bitcoin dominance is Bitcoin's market cap as a share of the total value of all cryptocurrencies. On November 11, 2026 it stood at 60.5% on CoinMarketCap: of every $100 held in crypto, about $60 was in Bitcoin. Dominance doesn't tell you whether prices will rise or fall. It tells you where the money in crypto sits, and whether it is moving toward Bitcoin or away from it, which is why traders read it next to Bitcoin's price rather than on its own.
- Bitcoin dominance is Bitcoin's market cap divided by the total crypto market cap. It read 60.5% on CoinMarketCap on November 11, 2026.
- It only compares Bitcoin with everything else. It can rise while every coin falls, as it did in the month to November 11, 2026.
- Read it together with Bitcoin's price: each of the four combinations means something different.
- Stablecoins sit in the total and pull the reading down, most of all in falling markets. Without them, Bitcoin's share was about 68.6% on November 11.
- CoinMarketCap, CoinGecko and TradingView count different coins, so their numbers never match exactly. Pick one source and follow its direction.
What is Bitcoin dominance?
The formula is simple:
Bitcoin dominance = Bitcoin's market cap ÷ total crypto market cap × 100
A coin's market cap is its price times its circulating supply. At 00:00 UTC on November 11, 2026, CoinMarketCap put the whole crypto market at about $2.45 trillion and Bitcoin at about $1.48 trillion. $1.48 trillion divided by $2.45 trillion is 60.5%.
CoinMarketCap describes the metric as Bitcoin's share of the overall cryptocurrency sector, with every asset it tracks in the total, stablecoins included. That last detail matters more than it looks, and we come back to it below.
Why BTC.D is different on every site
Each data site divides by its own list of coins, so the same moment gives slightly different readings:
| Source | What the total includes | Reading on Nov 11, 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| CoinMarketCap | Every asset it tracks, stablecoins included | 60.5% (00:00 UTC) |
| CoinGecko | Every coin it tracks, about 22,800 | 60.4% (08:51 UTC) |
| TradingView BTC.D | The top 125 coins by market cap | Live on the chart |
TradingView's BTC.D is the one most chart traders see. It divides Bitcoin's market cap by the combined market cap of the top 125 coins, so it can read a little differently from the CoinGecko figure. None of them is wrong. The practical rule is to pick one source and compare it only with itself.
13 years of Bitcoin dominance
The long history shows that dominance moves in wide, slow swings:
- 2013 to early 2017: above 76% until mid-March 2017 (CoinMarketCap's data starts in May 2013). There were few other coins, and most were small.
- January 2018: the record low. On January 14, 2018 dominance was 32.4%, and the rest of the market was worth about $503 billion against Bitcoin's $241 billion, twice as much.
- January 2021: back up to 71.8% on January 3, 2021.
- 2021 and 2022: down to 39.3% in May 2021 and to 37.7% on September 9, 2022.
- June 2025: 65.1% on June 27, 2025, the highest reading since January 2021.
- 2026 so far: a narrow band, between 57.3% (June 4) and 60.6% (May 5). On November 11 it was 60.5%, near the top of that band.
The low points came when money poured into other coins faster than into Bitcoin, and dominance recovered when that money left again. That is a description of past swings, not a schedule: the swings had no fixed length or size, and nothing in the chart says when the next one starts.
How to read dominance next to Bitcoin's price
Because dominance is a ratio, the same reading can come from very different markets. Pairing it with the direction of Bitcoin's price separates them:
| Bitcoin's price | Dominance | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Rising | Rising | Bitcoin leads; the rest of the market rises less or falls |
| Rising | Falling | The rest of the market rises faster than Bitcoin; money spreads out |
| Falling | Rising | The rest of the market falls harder than Bitcoin |
| Falling | Falling | The rest holds up better, or stablecoins grow as a share while prices fall |
This is arithmetic, not a forecast: each row describes what has already happened. The last row is the tricky one, because a falling market can lower Bitcoin's share without any altcoin doing well, purely through stablecoins.
What the month to November 11, 2026 showed
The past month is a clean example of the third row: Bitcoin fell, and its dominance rose.
What happened, with the data dated:
- Price: on Binance's BTC/USDT market, Bitcoin closed at $80,504 on November 4 and at $73,796 on November 10, 2026 (UTC daily closes).
- ETF flows: US spot Bitcoin ETFs lost $201 million on November 9, taking outflows since November 2 to around $1.5 billion, CoinDesk reported from Farside Investors data.
- Inflation: the October CPI report, released on November 10, showed consumer prices up 0.4% for the month, against the 0.3% economists polled by Dow Jones had expected (per the same CoinDesk report).
- Sentiment: the Crypto Fear & Greed Index read 29, "Fear", on November 11. Our guide to the Fear and Greed Index explains how it is built.
Over the month from October 11 to November 11, the whole market lost 12.5% of its value. Bitcoin lost 11.0%, everything else 14.8% and Ethereum 18.1%. Because Bitcoin fell less than the rest, its share rose from 59.4% to 60.5%, while Ethereum's share slipped from 10.9% to 10.2%. The "everything except Bitcoin" bar even flatters altcoins, because it includes stablecoins, which kept their $1 value; the coins that actually trade against the dollar fell further.
What traders watch from here, framed as conditions rather than calls:
- If Bitcoin's price steadies while dominance keeps rising, the rest of the market is still lagging even without broad selling.
- If dominance turns down while Bitcoin's price rises, money is spreading into other coins, the second row of the table.
- If both fall together, check the stablecoin share before reading it as strength in altcoins.
ETF flows are one of the inputs behind these moves; our step-by-step guide shows how to track BlackRock's crypto flows yourself.
Stablecoins: the hidden weight in the total
Stablecoins such as USDT and USDC count in the total market cap, but they are built to stay at $1. When the rest of the market falls, their share grows automatically, and every other share shrinks, Bitcoin's included. So in a sell-off, plain dominance understates how much ground Bitcoin gained against other coins.
To see the size of the effect, we set the total stablecoin supply from DefiLlama against CoinMarketCap's total market cap. This is our own estimate, since the two sources don't count exactly the same coins:
| Date | Bitcoin dominance | Stablecoins' share of the total | Bitcoin's share without stablecoins |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jan 3, 2021 | 71.8% | 3.5% | 74.4% |
| Sep 9, 2022 | 37.7% | 15.5% | 44.6% |
| Jun 27, 2025 | 65.1% | 7.7% | 70.5% |
| Nov 11, 2026 | 60.5% | 11.9% | 68.6% |
The September 2022 low looks less extreme once stablecoins are set aside: deep in a bear market, they made up more than 15% of the total. On November 11, 2026, stablecoins added up to about $291 billion, close to 12% of the market. On TradingView, USDT.D tracks Tether's share alone, and some traders watch it next to BTC.D for exactly this reason.
Bitcoin dominance and altcoin season
"Altcoin season" is the phrase for stretches when most coins beat Bitcoin. The best-known gauge, Blockchaincenter's Altcoin Season Index, calls it altcoin season when 75% of the top 50 coins, excluding stablecoins and asset-backed tokens, have performed better than Bitcoin over the last 90 days. A reading of 25 or below counts as Bitcoin season. On November 11, 2026 the index read 33: neither one.
Falling dominance and altcoin season are related, but they are not the same thing. Dominance can fall because Ethereum alone rallies, or because stablecoins grow as a share while prices drop, with most altcoins doing nothing. The index counts how many coins beat Bitcoin, so it is a broader check. TradingView's TOTAL2 (the market without Bitcoin) and TOTAL3 (without Bitcoin and Ethereum) show the same split in dollars.
Dominance is a ratio, not a price. It can rise while every coin, Bitcoin included, loses value, as it did in the month to November 11, 2026. A rising BTC.D does not mean Bitcoin is safe to hold or that altcoins are about to rebound.
How traders use Bitcoin dominance
- As context, not a trigger. Dominance says which part of the market money has favoured. It doesn't say when that changes, so it belongs next to a strategy's own entry rules, not in place of them.
- To keep Bitcoin's trend in view when trading altcoins. Altcoins often move with Bitcoin, and further: in the month to November 11, Ethereum fell 18.1% while Bitcoin fell 11.0%. Navixa's Smart DCA strategy has an optional setting for this, off by default: Altcoins: start cycles only in a Bitcoin uptrend. On an altcoin, new buying cycles then also wait for Bitcoin's own trend. It reads Bitcoin's trend, not dominance, but the idea is the same.
- To respect the gap between large and small coins. In Smart DCA's multi-coin backtest (Binance spot, the 1h, 2h and 4h charts, default settings, from each coin's first candle to October 27, 2026), all 60 tests on the top 20 coins by market cap ended above their start, against 35 of 60 on the coins ranked 21 to 40. Every coin is on the Smart DCA results page. These are past results, not a promise.
- One source, the trend over decimals. A move from 60.4% to 60.5% is noise. A move of several points over weeks, on the same source, is the signal people look for.
FAQ
What is a good level for Bitcoin dominance?
There isn't one. Since mid-2017, CoinMarketCap's reading has ranged from 32.4% to 71.8%. The direction, and what is driving it (other coins, Ethereum alone or stablecoins), says more than the level.
Does high Bitcoin dominance mean altcoins will drop?
No. High dominance means altcoins have done worse than Bitcoin up to now. It says nothing about what comes next. After the 71.8% of January 2021, dominance fell to 39.3% within five months; after the 65.1% of June 2025, it eased to 56.7% by September 2025 and has stayed between about 57% and 61% since.
Why does Bitcoin dominance differ on TradingView and CoinMarketCap?
Each divides by a different total. TradingView's BTC.D uses the top 125 coins, while CoinMarketCap and CoinGecko count every asset they track, including stablecoins.
Where can I check Bitcoin dominance?
On CoinMarketCap's Bitcoin dominance chart, on CoinGecko's global charts, and on TradingView under the symbol BTC.D, where you can draw it next to Bitcoin's price.
The bottom line
Bitcoin dominance is a simple ratio with a long memory: 32.4% at the 2018 low, 71.8% in January 2021, 60.5% on November 11, 2026. Read it next to Bitcoin's price, mind the stablecoins in the total, and use it to understand the market rather than to time it. If you trade altcoins alongside Bitcoin, the Smart DCA strategy page explains how its optional Bitcoin-trend filter works, and the results page shows how the same rules did on 40 coins, large and small.
