Bitcoin (BTC) dominance, a measure of Bitcoin’s overall share of the crypto market, has been steadily rising since 2023 amid a torrent of new cryptocurrency coins and tokens.

The current BTC market dominance is roughly 61.6%, down from the local peak of 64.3% recorded on Feb. 3.

BTC market dominance broke back above 60% on Feb. 2 amid a general market downturn over fears of a prolonged trade war between the United States and its trading partners.

Macroeconomic uncertainty typically takes a toll on risk-on assets, and the recent market downturn hit altcoins harder than BTC due to their lower liquidity and higher-risk profiles.

Bitcoin market dominance has been rising since 2023. Source: TradingView

The current market cycle also features Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs), which silo liquidity into these financial instruments — preventing capital rotation into altcoins, which crypto traders and investors have become accustomed to.

Previous cycles were characterized by investors rotating profits from less risky assets such as BTC into progressively higher-risk investments, starting with high market cap altcoins and eventually working their way into smaller cap tokens.

The liquidity siloed in traditional investment vehicles coupled with the proliferation of new coins and tokens competing for limited investor attention and capital has led some analysts to suggest that altcoin season is now a thing of the past and will not be a feature of the current or future market cycles.

Related: Bitcoin poised to reclaim $90,000, according to derivatives metrics

Too many tokens have saturated the market

The total number of cryptocurrency tokens and coins listed on CoinMarketCap on Feb. 8 was below 11 million unique assets, as of March 15 the number of digital assets listed on the website has surged to over 12.7 million.

Tens of millions of unique digital assets are now floating around the markets. Source: Dune

Over 600,000 tokens were launched in January 2025 alone. The vast majority of these assets were memecoins created on fair launch platforms and low-cap altcoins.

According to market analyst Jesse Myers, when these coins fail, they do not go to $0. Instead, they linger around market capitalizations of $10,000 to $100,000 — permanently trapping capital inside illiquid pools.

The proliferation of new tokens and digital assets prompted Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong to reevaluate the exchange’s token listing process to meet consumer demand.

Magazine: DeFi will rise again after memecoins die down: Sasha Ivanov, X Hall of Flame

This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision.

Ethereum’s native token, Ether (ETH), continues to consolidate under $2,000, which some traders view as a psychological level. Ether price slipped below this range on March 10, and the altcoin continues to trade at its lowest value since October 2023.

Ethereum 4-hour chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView

Ether price has also lost market value with respect to other major altcoins, with XRP price reaching its highest level against ETH in five years on March 15.

The real question among investors is whether ETH is capable of recapturing a portion of its recent losses or whether traders will capitulate if the price falls below $1,900.

Ethereum traders could jump ship if price falls below $1,900

According to data from IntoTheBlock, a data analytics platform, Ethereum holders accumulated 3.56 million ETH between $1,900 and $1,843, with an average price of $1,871. Therefore, the current accumulation value currently stands at $6.65 billion. This indicates that ETH’s price has a strong support level between $1,900 and $1,843, which can potentially act as the bullish reversal zone.

Ethereum In/Out of the Money chart. Source: X.com

However, if Ether drops below $1,843, data points to the possibility of rising capitulation fears. Capitulation is a market sentiment where investors tend to panic, selling their positions at a loss during a sharp market correction. If ETH consolidates for a prolonged period under $1,843, the likelihood of a deeper correction increases exponentially.

Below $1,843, the size and volume of ETH accumulation are significantly lower, which further illustrates the importance of the $1,900 to $1,843 support range.

Similarly, the percentage of Ethereum addresses under profit dropped to its lowest level since the start of the decade. It is the lowest value since December 2022 at just under 46%.

ETH: Percentage of addresses in Profit. Source: X

A low percentage of profitable addresses has historically indicated a price bottom for Ethereum. Given the high ETH accumulation and fewer profitable addresses, these factors may act as bullish signals. As a result, the likelihood of Ethereum consolidating below $1,843 in the long term is decreasing.

Hitesh Malviya, the founder of DYOR crypto, said it is not a “great time to bearish on ETH.” In an X post, Malviya highlighted the recent rise of real-world assets (RWAs) in the industry, with a 50.9% increase in growth over the past 30 days and an 850% yearly increase, with Ethereum and ZKsync capturing more than 80% of the total market share.

RWA’s market share on L1s. Source: X

Related: Bitcoin ‘bullish cross’ with 50%-plus average returns flashes again

Ethereum long/short ratio indicates a neutral market

Alphractal, a crypto data analysis website, reviewed Ether’s current market sentiment based on the long/short ratio, a metric to evaluate the proportion of futures traders betting for price increases (long) versus decreases (shorts).

Whales vs. Retail ratio heatmap. Source: X

According to the chart above, the largest investors are more inclined toward taking long positions, whereas smaller investors are in the process of deleveraging. Deleveraging means unwinding risky, borrowed positions, which lowers market volatility and interest in leveraged trading.

With the current ratio at 1.3, the long/short ratio indicates a balanced but cautious market. Alphractal added,

“This indicates that, in the short term, Ethereum is experiencing low volatility and low interest in leverage, which may leave many traders exhausted and impatient.”

Related: Ethereum onchain data suggests $2K ETH price is out of reach for now

This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision.

Opinion by: Alex Nguyen, CEO at VibrantX

The Move programming language’s origin is not super cypherpunk. Facebook (now Meta) created Move after the Libra/Diem team compared major smart contract languages (Bitcoin Script, Ethereum Virtual Machine bytecode languages) and decided their formidable in-house tech talent could make a new language built on years of private and public sector research.

The original team, including founders Mo Shaikh, Avery Ching, and their engineering team, left Facebook to continue as a fully independent, open-source project headed up by Aptos Labs and supported by the Aptos Foundation.

Importantly, Meta’s failed Libra experiment left us with a programming language specifically designed for crypto finance. Move on Aptos is now open-source, and the Aptos Foundation is a commercially driven organization that welcomes builders from all backgrounds.

Move is now the best programming language for verifying the absence of bugs and checking for modifications and leaks, which is how most blockchains get hacked.

This verification relies on two key features of Move on Aptos: (1) “backward compatibility” and (2) the concept of an “auditor at runtime.”

Backward compatibility means future-proofing

Move on Aptos is fast and cheap, creating a competitive user experience, especially for decentralized finance (DeFi) applications. Aptos aims for a high transaction throughput, with theoretical capabilities reaching up to 160,000 transactions per second (TPS) through its parallel execution engine, Block-STM.

Aptos’ sub-second finality means transactions are confirmed quickly, enhancing the user experience in time-sensitive applications.

To be fair, other chains also have these qualities. Move on Aptos is, however, designed to be “backward-compatible.” 

Future upgrades won’t disrupt existing projects. This helps developers feel more confident building long-term solutions without worrying about things breaking because of a Move upgrade. 

Move smart contracts are designed to be upgradeable without affecting the user experience, which is essential for mainstream adoption. This enables teams to implement bug fixes and new features with zero disruption. 

Recent: Crypto startups can’t just rely on solid tech to win VC funding: OKX

Smart contract flexibility through Move on Aptos’ specific security features results in better and faster product shipping. Being more flexible, Move on Aptos can quickly adapt to support new ecosystems.

“Bytecode” verification prevents leaks

Solidity contract hacks have been prevalent over the years. When building Web3 technology for markets worth billions or even trillions of dollars, it’s crucial to have a security system that will protect projects from resource leaks, invalid memory access and other unauthorized modifications. 

As it was initially developed for Meta’s Diem project, Move is designed for safety, resource management and performance, making it attractive for developers looking for a secure yet robust language for smart contracts.

When deploying code using Move, the code will be verified across several crucial coding conditions like proper resource management, type correctness and reference safety. No matter what happens to the code, it will be verified first to prevent any faulty or malicious smart contracts from running. 

This is the power of Move’s built-in bytecode verification.

Real-time verification of the absence of bugs

Renowned computer science pioneer Edsger Dijkstra noted, “Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never to show their absence!” 

Move’s formal verification capabilities let developers actually prove that there are no bugs in specific code according to preset specifications. 

MoveVM is less battle-tested than Ethereum’s virtual machine, but as Rushi Manche, founder of Movement Labs, has explained, Move requires much less code auditing. The MoveVM runtime can act as an “auditor at runtime.”

The verifier inside the MoveVM ensures that the transaction code is not harmful and that it cannot create, duplicate or destroy resources not allowed by the signer(s) of the transaction. In other words, MoveVM is an “auditor at runtime” rather than a human smart contract auditor. 

Today, Move on Aptos is more than just a smart contract language. Move on Aptos is the longest-standing, most recognized and widely used version of Move, boasting one of the fastest-growing developer communities and a rapidly growing ecosystem of infrastructure, tooling and projects.

Quickly verifying code before deployment created the conditions for the Move on Aptos ecosystem. From a flawed Web2 beginning, Move is now primed to grow DeFi.

Opinion by: Alex Nguyen, CEO at VibrantX.

This article is for general information purposes and is not intended to be and should not be taken as legal or investment advice. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed here are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.