Bitcoin dominance: what it shows and how to read it

Bitcoin dominance, BTC.D, is bitcoin's share of the whole crypto market's capitalization. It is one of the most watched numbers in crypto because it compresses a big question into one line: is money concentrating in bitcoin or spreading into everything else?

How it is calculated — and the catch

The formula is simple: bitcoin's market cap divided by the total market cap, times 100. The catch is in the denominator. The total market cap includes stablecoins — USDT, USDC and the rest — and they are now a large slice of it.

That makes the classic BTC.D — CRYPTOCAP:BTC.D on TradingView, the dominance figure on CoinGecko and CoinMarketCap — move for reasons that have nothing to do with altcoins:

• When new money arrives and sits in stablecoins, the total grows, bitcoin's share shrinks — and BTC.D falls, although nothing rotated into altcoins.
• In a sell-off, money runs into stablecoins. Their share jumps, and BTC.D can fall even while altcoins drop harder than bitcoin — the opposite of what a falling dominance is supposed to mean.

So the classic chart mixes two stories: bitcoin against altcoins, and coins against cash.

A clean dominance chart on TradingView

Take stablecoins out of the denominator. The manual way:

CRYPTOCAP:BTC/(CRYPTOCAP:TOTAL-CRYPTOCAP:USDT-CRYPTOCAP:USDC-CRYPTOCAP:DAI)*100

It works, but the list goes stale. DAI still circulates, yet since MakerDAO became Sky in 2024 its successor USDS has grown larger, and there are others — Ethena's USDe among them. A shorter and more complete version uses TradingView's own total without stablecoins:

CRYPTOCAP:BTC/CRYPTOCAP:TOTALES*100

TOTALES is the capitalization of the 125 largest coins excluding stablecoins, so you do not have to maintain the list yourself. TradingView's TOTAL also covers the top 125, so both versions are built on the same universe.

The same idea gives clean versions of the other totals: TOTAL2ES — without bitcoin and stablecoins, TOTAL3ES — without bitcoin, ether and stablecoins.

Reading dominance with the price

Dominance on its own says little; read it together with bitcoin's price (clean version):

• Bitcoin up, dominance up — bitcoin leads, altcoins lag. Typical of the early phase of a rally.
• Bitcoin up, dominance down — altcoins are growing faster. The setup people call risk-on and look for before an altcoin season.
• Bitcoin down, dominance up — altcoins are falling harder. Money is leaving the riskier end first.
• Bitcoin down, dominance down — altcoins are holding better than bitcoin. Rare and usually short-lived; check that it is not a single sector carrying the whole move.

Next to dominance, watch the stablecoin share (USDT.D): a rising share means money is leaving coins altogether, whatever dominance does.

In AxiPivot

The macro bar above the market, portfolio and rotation pages shows BTC.D and USDT.D side by side. Our BTC.D comes from CoinGecko's global data, so it is the classic one, with stablecoins in the total. That is why USDT.D sits next to it: if BTC.D falls while USDT.D rises, the money is going to cash, not to altcoins.

For decisions inside a portfolio — which coin has room left and which has made its move — see how AxiPivot rotation works and the guide to altcoin season.

For analysis, not for trading. Nothing here is financial advice.