Bitcoin has climbed roughly 24% over the past week to near $79,000, its best run since 2023, while altcoins grew by less even during the sharpest leg of the move. Bitcoin's share of the total crypto market has risen to around 61% before easing to 59%, the opposite of what typically happens when altcoins genuinely outperform.
Bitcoin is trading near $79,000, up roughly 24% over the past week and on pace for its best run since 2023. Altcoins are supposed to be the more volatile side of the trade, swinging harder than bitcoin in both directions. This week, that didn't happen — the broader market grew, just not enough to catch up.
What's driving bitcoin
The move traces to last Wednesday, when the U.S. Treasury said it would double its long-bond buybacks from $2 billion to $4 billion per operation starting September 9. That weakened the dollar and pushed investors toward bitcoin as an inflation hedge, the same trade that has helped push gold to records this year.
President Donald Trump added pressure two days later, meeting crypto executives at the White House and pushing Congress to pass the Clarity Act, a bill that would settle which U.S. regulator oversees which crypto assets. As bitcoin broke through $70,000, traders who had bet against it were forced to buy back in at a loss to close those bets — a short squeeze that Bitget Wallet research analyst Lacie Zhang estimated wiped out more than $4 billion in crypto shorts over two to three days.
Altcoins can't keep pace
Ethereum led the alt basket, climbing about 30% over the same week to above $2,500. But Total3, the index that strips out both bitcoin and Ethereum, cooled after an early burst and now sits around $753 billion, down for the week even as bitcoin pushed toward $80,000.
Total2, which tracks the full altcoin market, told a similar story: it jumped more than 24% between August 19 and 22, pushing it back above $1 trillion, before giving back some of that gain to trade near $1.05 trillion.
That split shows up in bitcoin dominance, its share of the entire crypto market. If altcoins were truly outperforming, dominance would fall as money spread into smaller coins; instead it climbed to around 61% this week before correcting to about 59%, near its highest level of the year. The CoinMarketCap Altcoin Season Index, which tracks how many of the top 100 coins have beaten bitcoin's price over the trailing 90 days, sits at 46 — well short of the 75 mark that would signal an actual altcoin season.
A sustained break above $80,000 could open a path toward $82,000 to $87,000, with $75,000 to $76,000 acting as the main pullback zone.
Source: Decrypt
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