Bitcoin gains back dominance and surges higher

Today’s stellar performance in Bitcoin (up nearly 5% as of 5:15 EST) comes out of a few recent developments in the crypto space and  they appear likely to continue to prop up the world’s biggest cryptocurrency. Bitcoin’s dominance among all crypto assets has also been on the move as it surpassed 50% of the total crypto market cap today, a level not seen since May 2021.

SEC bolstered BTC dominance

The recent lawsuit against the worlds largest centralized crypto exchange Binance named several of the Bitcoin’s top competitors as securities. This led to a loss of around 30% in some of the top cryptocurrencies, and an increase in BTC dominance. BTC dominance was sitting at 47.31% on June 5th the day before the SEC suit, and has gained 7.26% in the short span of 15 days since the announcement, currently above 50%.

Although the alt. coins listed in the lawsuit have regained some footing over the past few days and some coins have appealed their new classification as a security they are still down dramatically since June 6th.

The SEC domino effect

Another event may prove to build on the bearish pressure recently applied to alt. coins. This event was recently announced and may provide BTC Dominance with yet another surge. The event I am referring to is the now bankrupt crypto lender Celsius converting $215 million of select alt. coins into Bitcoin and Ethereum. The coins set to be liquidated include Celsius (CEL), Polygon (MATIC), Cardano (ADA), Chainlink (LINK), Litecoin (LTC), Polkadot (DOT), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Aave (AAVE), Binance Coin (BNB), Uniswap (UNI), Stellar (XLM), Solana (SOL), EOS (EOS), FTX Token (FTT), and  Serum (SRM).

The liquidation of these coins is linked to the recent SEC suit and set to begin on July1st. Other than CEL token which has already lost 80% of its value this year coins that will most likely be affected include Polygon (MATIC) and Cardano (ADA) of which Celsius holds $51.8 and $26.2 million of in the coffers set to be sold at the start of July.  

New institutional developments

Two notable institutional breakthroughs helped propel Bitcoin higher today and they include Blackrock’s filling for a Bitcoin spot ETF and the announcement of a non-custodial exchange EDX that will be backed by Fidelity, Charles Schwab, and Citadel. The exchange will cater to institutions who whish to gain exposure in the crypto space without some of the risks that are linked to self-custody or custodial exchanges such as Binance and Coinbase.