Bitcoin's market share reaches its highest in two years

Bitcoin's market share has been ascending steeply after two years since its fall in 2017. By rising to above 60%, it has surpassed it's previous high value in October and December of 2017. The entire crypto market cap was accounted more or less by bitcoin alone until two factors started threatening its dominance - the rise of ethereum and the infamous blocksize debate.

Around two years back, ethereum almost overtook bitcoin's market cap. However, while bitcoin went on to rise, ethereum saw a bearish correction. Bitcoin went on to reign the market soon after that, reaching its all-time high of $20,000. Around this point, ETH and XRP rallied and brought bitcoin's market share to its lowest at 33.41% on January 8th, 2018.

Ever since this, bitcoin's market share has been increasing in parts because it fell less than other cryptos during the 2018 bear market. Notably, bitcoin’s price has also risen more than other cryptos since December 2018 and has doubled in value over last year.

A big reason why Bitcoin remains the dominating currency is because of its sheer popularity. Bitcoin is often considered to be the benchmark with which the other coins are measured. The Ethereum Foundation itself described Ether as:

"ETH is digital money. If you’ve heard of Bitcoin, ETH has many of the same features.”

Because of bitcoin's overwhelming popularity, other cryptocurrencies such as Facebook's  'coin' was explained with reference to bitcoin or at least mentioned bitcoin as it was easier to explain. This inadvertently leads to an increase in bitcoin's popularity.