Only a handful of altcoins from the top 50 tokens by market cap have managed to outperform Bitcoin (BTC) this year, with Bitcoin dominance reaching a three-year high over the weekend.
The best-performing altcoin among the top 50 is the memecoin Dogecoin (DOGE), which has recorded year-to-date gains of over 77%. It has climbed from $0.09 on January 1st to $0.15 at the time of writing.
Other altcoins that have outperformed Bitcoin include Shiba Inu (SHIB), Stacks (STX), Binance’s BNB, Mantle (MNT), and Render (RNDR).
Bitcoin itself has seen significant growth, rising from $44,100 on January 1st to $65,000 at the time of writing, a gain of 54% so far this year.
The increase in Bitcoin’s price has been attributed to consistent institutional inflows into the 10 U.S.-traded spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that were approved in January. These ETFs have generated over $12 billion in cumulative net inflows.
Bitcoin dominance reached a new three-year high of 56.5% on April 13th, following a marketwide sell-off triggered by escalating geopolitical tensions in the Middle East.
While Bitcoin has recovered from the sell-off, many smaller altcoins have struggled to regain their footing and have experienced significant price declines.
Aptos (APT) and Uniswap (UNI) were among the top tokens by market cap that saw the largest declines, with losses of 35% and 31% respectively in the past seven days.
According to Tony Sycamore, an analyst at IG Market, Bitcoin is on track for its fourth weekly decline. However, Sycamore predicts that Bitcoin will gradually climb to around $80,000 in the coming months, as long as it remains above its key support level of $60,000 to $58,000.
Despite the current negative sentiment towards risk assets, Sycamore remains optimistic about Bitcoin’s future performance and expects the uptrend to continue.