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Bitcoin dominance chart: BTC.D, USDT.D and total crypto market cap

Open a bitcoin dominance chart (CRYPTOCAP:BTC.D) with indicators, plus ETH and USDT dominance and total crypto market cap, from the crypto heatmap.

A bitcoin dominance chart shows Bitcoin's share of the whole crypto market's value, in per cent. In SuperCharting you open it as the symbol CRYPTOCAP:BTC.D, either from the strip above the crypto heatmap or from Symbol Search, and it charts like any other symbol, with indicators and drawings. The same strip gives total crypto market cap, the market without Bitcoin, Ethereum and Tether dominance, and the share held outside the top 10 coins.

What dominance and total market cap measure

Every coin's market cap is its price times the coins in circulation. Add them up and you get the total crypto market cap. Dominance is one coin's slice of that total:

• CRYPTOCAP:TOTAL (Total market cap): the value of the whole crypto market, in US dollars.
• CRYPTOCAP:TOTAL2 (Excluding Bitcoin): the same total with Bitcoin taken out, a common stand-in for "the altcoin market".
• CRYPTOCAP:BTC.D (Bitcoin dominance): Bitcoin's market cap divided by the total, in per cent.
• CRYPTOCAP:ETH.D (Ethereum dominance): Ethereum's share of the total.
• CRYPTOCAP:USDT.D (Tether dominance): the share held in the USDT stablecoin. Because USDT is meant to stay at one dollar, its share rises when the rest of the market falls in value or when money is parked in stablecoins.
• CRYPTOCAP:OTHERS.D (Outside the top 10): the share of everything beyond the ten largest coins.

These are index values that TradingView computes; SuperCharting reads them from TradingView's public market data and does not calculate them itself. A dominance figure is a ratio, so it can move without any price moving the way you expect: if Bitcoin falls 5% and the rest of the market falls 10%, BTC.D goes up.

TradingView is a trademark of TradingView, Inc.; SuperCharting is not affiliated with it.

The dominance strip on the crypto heatmap

Open Products > Heatmaps and pick Crypto coins, top 100 from the source menu at the top of the panel. Above the treemap of coins sits a strip of six cards: Total market cap, Excluding Bitcoin, Bitcoin dominance, Ethereum dominance, Tether dominance and Outside the top 10.

Each card shows the latest value (dominance as a percentage with two decimals, market cap in dollars shortened to T or B) and the change over the period chip you have selected: 1D, 1W, 1M, 3M, YTD or 1Y. Change the chip and the cards and the coin tiles recolour together. Click a card and that index loads on the active chart.

The panel refreshes once a minute, and the figures are cached for about a minute, so the strip is a quick overview rather than a tick-by-tick display. The strip only appears on the crypto source, and if the data feed does not answer for these indices the strip is hidden rather than showing stale or made-up numbers.

How to open a bitcoin dominance chart in SuperCharting

1. Sign in and open the chart (accounts are free today).
2. Open Products > Heatmaps and choose Crypto coins, top 100.
3. Click the Bitcoin dominance card. The active chart switches to CRYPTOCAP:BTC.D.
4. Or click the symbol name at the top left to open Symbol Search, type "btc.d" and pick CRYPTOCAP:BTC.D. The same works for usdt.d, eth.d, total and total2.
5. Pick an interval from the interval menu. These indices load in minutes (1 to 45), hours (1 to 4), days, weeks and months.
6. Click Indicators to add studies, exactly as on a coin chart.

Worked example: BTC.D on the daily chart with a 50-day average

1. Open CRYPTOCAP:BTC.D as above and set the interval to 1D.
2. Click Indicators, type "sma" and click Simple moving average. It arrives with a length of 9.
3. Hover the legend line, click the gear for Settings, set Length to 50 on the Inputs tab and click Ok.
4. Add a second Simple moving average with Length 200 if you also want the longer trend.

Now read it. Suppose BTC.D stands at 60.5% and the 50-day average at 59.8%, with the line sloping up. That says Bitcoin's share has been growing over roughly the past seven weeks (crypto trades every day). If the value later closes below a flattening 50-day average, Bitcoin's share has stopped growing for now. Neither picture says whether prices will rise or fall: dominance can climb while the whole market drops. The numbers here are an illustration, not a reading of today's market.

To watch the ratio and an altcoin side by side, open Layout setup and choose two charts, then put CRYPTOCAP:BTC.D in one and a pair such as BINANCE:ETHUSDT in the other. Leave Symbol off under SYNC IN LAYOUT so each chart keeps its own symbol, and switch on Interval if both should stay on 1D; the multi-chart layouts guide explains the sync switches. To reuse the two averages on TOTAL2 or USDT.D, save them with Indicator templates > Save indicator template… (the indicator templates guide has the details). The moving averages guide covers the settings and an alert script for crosses.

How traders read dominance against altcoins

There are a few common readings. They are habits, not rules, and they fail often:

• BTC.D rising usually means Bitcoin is doing better than the rest of the market, either rising faster or falling more slowly.
• BTC.D falling while TOTAL2 rises is what many traders mean by "altcoin season": money is spreading into other coins and their combined value is growing.
• USDT.D rising points to money waiting in stablecoins, often during sell-offs. Some traders watch it as an inverse of the market's mood.
• OTHERS.D rising shows the smaller coins outside the top 10 gaining share, which traders read as appetite for smaller, riskier coins.

Always check dominance against TOTAL or TOTAL2. A falling BTC.D during a market-wide drop is a very different thing from a falling BTC.D while altcoin prices climb.

Limits to know

• History is capped per interval. These indices come through one request of up to 5,000 bars per interval. Scrolling further left loads nothing more. On the daily chart that is a long history; on 1-minute bars it is only a few days.
• No volume of meaning. Dominance is a ratio, not a traded market, so volume-based tools such as VWAP or volume profile have little or nothing to work with.
• Not tradable. You cannot buy BTC.D, and SuperCharting does not place orders anywhere. It is a reading of the market, used next to the coins you actually chart.
• The data source. The index values and the strip depend on TradingView's public market data. If that feed stops answering, the strip hides and the charts may not load until it returns.

For coin and perpetual charts from Binance, Bybit, OKX, Coinbase and KuCoin, see SuperCharting for crypto.

Frequently asked questions

What is the symbol for bitcoin dominance?

CRYPTOCAP:BTC.D. Ethereum dominance is CRYPTOCAP:ETH.D, Tether dominance CRYPTOCAP:USDT.D, total market cap CRYPTOCAP:TOTAL and the market without Bitcoin CRYPTOCAP:TOTAL2.

Can I add indicators to the dominance chart?

Yes. Once CRYPTOCAP:BTC.D is on the chart, indicators, drawings and your own Pine-compatible scripts work on it as on any other symbol. Volume-based indicators have little to measure.

Does a falling BTC.D mean altcoin season has started?

Not on its own. Check TOTAL2 as well: altcoin season usually means BTC.D falling while the altcoin market's value rises. Dominance also falls when Bitcoin drops faster than everything else.

How often do the strip values update?

The heatmap panel refreshes every minute and the values are cached for about a minute, so expect a delay of up to a minute or two.

Is the dominance chart free?

SuperCharting is currently free to use, and every account gets the same limits. Paid plans may be introduced later.