Cryptocurrency markets are crashing. Bitcoin’s price has fallen by about 20% in the last seven days, wiping out $7 billion of market value. But it’s doing better than other major cryptocurrencies like ether and ripple, which have lost 30% or more.
Bitcoin’s relative resilience in the current crash bolsters its status as the “reserve currency” of the cryptocurrency markets. Some $29.5 billion worth of bitcoin has been traded on global exchanges in the last month, compared to $26.3 billion worth of ethereum, according to data site Coin Marketcap. Not all traders are cashing out of ether into bitcoin, of course, the ether-Korean won currency pair is among the most actively traded in the last 24 hours, Coin Marketcap’s data shows.
One indicator of bitcoin’s health relative to other cryptocurrencies is the so-called “Bitcoin Dominance Index” maintained by Coin Marketcap. It shows the total value of all bitcoin in circulation as a proportion of the value of all cryptocurrencies in circulation. As cryptos in general rallied this year, bitcoin’s dominance has fallen. But as markets have corrected in recent weeks, bitcoin’s dominance rose.
Bitcoin is still more than twice as valuable as ethereum, and about six times as valuable as Ripple. That gap could grow if the cryptomarket correction continues.