Total crypto market cap and Bitcoin dominance, explained

The whole-market tile is the biggest number on the Board and the most misunderstood. It is not the amount of money in crypto. Here is what it is, and what the dominance figure beneath it is telling you.

What market cap measures

A coin's market cap is its price multiplied by the number of coins in circulation. Add that up for every coin and you get the total crypto market cap, the value of everything at today's prices.

The key phrase is at today's prices. Market cap is not money that has been paid into crypto, and it is not money that could be taken out. If one person buys a thinly traded coin and lifts its price by 10 percent, the market cap of every coin held by everyone else rises by 10 percent too, even though only one small trade happened. Cap can move by billions on very little actual money.

That is why the Board shows the change since yesterday rather than treating the level as the story. The direction and speed of the number tell you more than its size.

Bitcoin dominance

Dominance is Bitcoin's share of the total. If the whole market is worth $2.7 trillion and Bitcoin is worth $1.5 trillion, dominance is about 56 percent.

Rising dominance means money is concentrating in Bitcoin: either Bitcoin is rising faster than everything else, or everything else is falling faster than Bitcoin. Inside crypto, that is the cautious posture. Falling dominance means the smaller coins are outrunning Bitcoin, which is what happens when appetite for risk is high.

How to read the two together

Total cap up and dominance up: a Bitcoin-led rally. The safest asset in the group is doing the work.

Total cap up and dominance down: the smaller coins are leading. Historically this is later-stage behavior in a rally, when the crowd goes looking for bigger swings.

Total cap down and dominance up: a sell-off where the smaller coins are being hit hardest. Money is retreating toward Bitcoin, not leaving entirely.

Total cap down and dominance down: broad selling in which Bitcoin is falling faster than the rest. This is the rarest combination and usually short-lived.

What it does not tell you

Market cap says nothing about how much of a coin's supply actually trades. Some coins carry large caps on tiny daily volume, which means the cap could not be realized by anyone trying to sell. The total also depends on which coins a data provider counts and how it treats supply that is locked or unreleased. Different providers publish different totals for the same day. The Board uses one source consistently so that the change over time is comparable, even if the level differs from what you see elsewhere.

Where the data comes from

Total market cap and Bitcoin dominance come from CoinGecko's global market data, read at every site build.