Bitcoin Dominance Index Approaches 90% as Ethereum and Steem Decline

Developers backing a scaling roadmap published by Gregory Maxwell, Blockstream's CTO, represented over 90 percent of Bitcoin Core's commits in 2015. The roadmap centers on Segregated Witness, a technical improvement that became eligible for activation on the network in recent weeks. Every major bitcoin wallet intends to support SegWit, yet miners have signaled support from under 30 percent, short of the 95 percent threshold needed to activate it. Network congestion has prompted some criticism. Mike Hearn, a former bitcoin developer, declared the cryptocurrency a failed experiment. The scaling debate split the community between those who back SegWit and those who want a simple block size increase. Bitcoin's price doubled over 2016 despite these tensions.

The surge in bitcoin's market dominance came from altcoin weakness. Ethereum's market cap collapsed from over $1.5 billion earlier in 2016 to $750 million today, a decline tied to the DAO hack and the subsequent hard fork that created Ethereum Classic. ETC's price doubled against ETH in December. Steem fell even further: its market cap peaked at over $400 million in July and has since dropped below $40 million. Ripple's XRP token shows a similar pattern. The token hit an $800 million market cap in late 2014 but trades at $250 million today.

Monero stands apart among altcoins. The privacy coin's market cap grew from around $15 million in March to $175 million today, driven by its integration into Alphabay, the darknet's largest marketplace. Alphabay claims that Monero accounts for 2 percent of their business. Crypto market cap rankings can mask important details about which coins move money.