SEC hostilities see Bitcoin dominance spike to 111-week high

Bitcoin’s dominance of the total crypto market cap spiked to 49.6% – a level not seen since late April 2021 – marking a 111-week high.

The period around April 2021 related to the first wave of the previous bull cycle, with BTC peaking at $65,000 by early-April 2021.

Despite China’s crypto ban and Elon Musk turning sour on the green credentials of Bitcoin miners, leading to a bottom of $28,900 by June 2021, the second wave recovered these losses to top out at $69,000 by November 2021 – marking the cycle peak.

At present, Bitcoin dominance moved just below 50% on June 10 as sell pressure saw total market cap outflows reach $61.8 billion – bottoming at $1.038 trillion by Saturday evening (BST).

The sell-off was likely a delayed response to the SEC lawsuits last week – as the gravity of the situation takes hold, particularly the potential delisting of altcoins from all U.S. exchanges.

Last week, the SEC filed against Binance and Coinbase over allegations of operating an unregistered exchange and offering U.S. citizens unregistered securities, among other charges.

Bitcoin relatively unaffected

Despite total crypto market outflows plunging, Bitcoin held relatively steady, losing 3.5% in value over the past seven days.

During the last week, the biggest top 100 losers were The Sandbox, Decentraland, and Axie Infinity, down 36%, 34%, and 33%, respectively. The 24-hour movements for the three tokens come in at 0.3%, 0.5%, and 0.6%, respectively – suggesting continuing market uncertainty after their severe price drops.

The U.S. Securities Exchange Commission named SAND, MANA, and AXS securities in both the Binance and Coinbase lawsuits. Nineteen tokens were specified as securities by the SEC, including large caps such as SOL, ADA, and MATIC.

The chart above showed Bitcoin dominance reversing its downtrend around September 2022, as the FTX collapse painted an unfavorable narrative around “tokens created from thin air” – unlike BTC, which is backed by energy consumption and a perceived decentralized network.

In conjunction with Bitcoin’s commodities status, a degree of protection from regulatory hostilities is expected, resulting in BTC dominance poised to move higher in line with altcoin flight.