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The crypto world is starting to look like just bitcoin again

Now dominating 63% of the total crypto market value, BTC keeps breaking new records.

7/18/25 7:57AM

Looks like 2025 is shaping up to be a big year for crypto... or at least for one particular coin.

Bitcoin briefly flew past $123,000 on Monday morning, the first day of the House’s “Crypto Week,” which (despite some disappointments) saw landmark legislation to regulate stablecoins passed by Congress, helping to boost the value of the entire crypto market beyond the $4 trillion mark on Friday. Through the week, the world’s biggest cryptocurrency did cool off a little, with a handful of meme coins and altcoins starting to steal the show.

However, zooming out beyond the recent altcoin gains reveals that the crypto landscape is still very much dominated by bitcoin, which takes up a whopping 63% of the total crypto market’s value.

Bitcoin's dominance chart — Sherwood News

Can’t stop, won’t stop

The last time bitcoin enjoyed a similar level of dominance was from 2018 to 2020 following the collapse of the Initial Coin Offering boom in 2017 that made investors abandon many altcoin projects. Companies like Tesla and PayPal had also just started to accept bitcoin as a form of payment, lending an increasing sense of legitimacy to the asset.

Just as new demand stemmed from bitcoin’s growing image as a safe haven, supply was also being squeezed by many long-term investors HODLing (translation: holding) on to their coins, expecting gains after a “halving” event in mid-2020.

But a lot has changed since then, and more commentators are looking away from retail bitcoin traders to explain BTC’s latest surge.

Stable(r) coin

As bitcoin’s price fluctuates less wildly and it begins to look a little more like big name securities such as the Magnificent 7, institutional investors have piled in. Bitcoin treasury companies like Michael Saylor’s Strategy, for instance, now hold $73 billion worth of bitcoin, while spot bitcoin ETFs have brought in some $50 billion since 2024, per Deutsche Bank analysis.

All told, institutions now control nearly one-third of all bitcoin in circulation.

Indeed, as fund managers move toward risky assets more broadly, with investors’ three-month risk appetite at its highest levels since since 2001, bitcoin appears to be hitting a bit of a sweet spot for today’s risk-on institutions — a high-beta asset that is nevertheless still perceived as a safe haven.

BofA chart risk appetite — Bank of America Global Research

Main character energy

The rising tide is not lifting all boats in the crypto world, however. A Coinbase-EY Parthenon survey of institutional investors reveals that this new institutional demand is only really filtering through to bitcoin and ethereum, with an overwhelming majority of the surveyed interviewees’ firms holding the two biggest cryptocurrencies (97% and 86%, respectively). Even when they are interested in other currencies, more than half of respondents held only one or two coins in addition to BTC and ETH.

Institutional investors survey chart — Sherwood News

Ethereum, which took advantage of some institutional attention from record spot ETF inflows and companies experimenting with an ethereum-based treasury to rise more than 20% in the last five days, might need even more — the asset is still about 25% below its all-time high from 2021.

Magic internet institutional money

Around 2010, when 10,000 BTC were used to buy two pizzas, the cryptocurrency was mostly seen as an alternate means of investment for critics of the centralized financial system, which was dominated by banks, traditional currencies, and huge corporations.

Now, 15 years and a lifetime’s worth of bitcoin gains later, it seems like the institutions could be starting to shape the crypto’s dominance more than the original HODLers.

Sage D. Young

Not Ethereal

BlackRock singles out ethereum as “beneficiary of growth”

In the next era of tokenization, ethereum is poised to dominate the market. It currently commands over 65% of tokenized assets across blockchain networks.

Sage D. Young1/20/26

Ethereum gives up its 2026 gains

As the overall market goes risk-off amid geopolitical tensions, ethereum has decreased 7% in the last 24 hours and is basically flat for 2026.

The cryptocurrency is hovering just below $3,000, a more than 10% pullback from this year’s high of around $3,350. The recent drawdown is the sharpest in the last 24 hours among its peers. Over the same period, bitcoin is down 3.6%, XRP dipped 5.2%, solana slumped 5.6%, and dogecoin tumbled 4%.

Meanwhile, leading ethereum treasury firm BitMine Immersion Technologies, which recently announced a $200 million investment into Beast Industries, acquired an additional 35,268 ethereum tokens worth $108 million last week, bringing its total to 4.2 million tokens worth nearly $12.7 billion at current prices.

The firm also allocated 581,920 tokens for staking, ethereum’s security mechanism. Participation has been on the rise, and the entry queue to start staking is multiple times longer than the exit line.

Yaël Bizouati-Kennedy

365 days later

1/20/26

Bitcoin, one year after Trump’s second inauguration

“If 2025 has taught us anything, it’s that apparently political favor is rarely a guarantee of future returns.”

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Sage D. Young1/15/26

Ethereum parent chain sets new record in daily transactions

On Wednesday, the ethereum parent chain logged its highest-ever transaction count at over 2.5 million transactions, a roughly 34% increase from 1.9 million transactions on the first day of the new year, data from blockchain analytics firm Artemis shows.

Artemis research analyst Alex Weseley told Sherwood News the largest drivers of the network’s transaction growth stems from Circle and Tether’s stablecoins, USDC and USDT, as usage of both are up over 200% year over year.

“It has also been interesting to see that the average transaction fee has remained low at < $0.20 per transaction, compared to the $52 average transaction fee paid when transaction counts peaked in 2021,” Weseley added.

The all-time high follows the activation of Pectra and Fusaka last year, two network upgrades aimed at enhancing the scalability of ethereum. “The changes ethereum is making to scale the L1 are starting to pay off, though we are still in the early innings,” Weseley said.

The price of ethereum has increased ~7% in the past seven days, outpacing its peers bitcoin, XRP, solana, and dogecoin. Meanwhile, spot ethereum ETFs trading in the US have seen almost $415.9 million in total inflows during the year so far, with $175 million from Wednesday alone, per SoSoValue.

Yaël Bizouati-Kennedy1/15/26

When will bitcoin break $100,000 again?

Bitcoin is having a strong start to 2026 that could see it catch up with precious metals’ rally. Bitcoin ETFs are also rallying, and saw their second consecutive day of massive inflows, recording $843.6 million on Wednesday, according to SoSoValue, bringing the total for the week to $1.7 billion.

Jake Kennis, research analyst at Nansen, told Sherwood News that a combination of easing inflation fears, geopolitical safe haven demand, stronger ETF inflows, and a technical breakout above $94,000 to $96,000 resistance are all converging to push BTC toward $100,000.

“The rally has solid institutional and onchain backing, but elevated leverage in futures markets and profit-taking by top traders near the $97K–$100K psychological resistance could trigger volatility,” Kennis said.

While bitcoin has retreated after nearing key resistance levels, Timot Lamarre, director of market research at Unchained, said that despite the asset having been well off all-time highs, it is set up for a sustainable run above $100,000.

“Institutions continue to open up bitcoin buying opportunities to new pools of capital, the macro environment continues to move toward significant monetary easing, and governments, companies, and individuals continue to increase their bitcoin stockpiles,” he said.

The analytics team at B2BINPAY echoed the sentiment, saying that the market structure remains bullish, “with potential to reach $100–105K in the coming weeks, potentially reaching the $120K–140K range later in 2026 if demand stays in place.”

A failure would likely mean a pullback to the $88,000 to $90,000 range, where liquidity is already concentrated, they said.

“Another crucial marker is leverage. Funding rates and open interest are far from extreme, with total OI at around $65B. That’s high. Yet, it’s still below the prior record/near-record zone seen in 2025, around $72B–$75B. So the market isn’t stretched,” the analysts said.