Bitcoin starts week near record highs, but its dominance is in jeopardy

The world’s largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization – bitcoin – rose above $66,000 per coin overnight, after hovering comfortably above $60,000 for the past two weeks, data from Binance shows.

At its morning peak, bitcoin’s price jumped to $66,400 around 09:00 GMT, edging close to its all-time high of $66,970 set last month. Overall, bitcoin has so far gained 8% in 24 hours.

Despite these gains and the recent launch of bitcoin futures-based exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in the US, bitcoin’s dominance on the crypto market is dwindling, analysts say, as alternative tokens, or altcoins, attract more investors.

The second-biggest cryptocurrency, ether, set a record of $4,740 per coin on Monday, with a 4.7% increase overnight and a 57% gain since the start of October. Litecoin, dogecoin, cardano and XPR all started the week up, as did many smaller tokens, like internet computer (ICP) and cosmos (ATOM). 

Still, it is widely known that altcoin rallies always follow bitcoin gains, and some analysts predict a rally toward $70,000 per bitcoin, as historically it does well in the fourth quarter.

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