Coinyong Market Brief 8/25 — Why Is Dominance Rising With Alts?

Over the past few days there's been a lot of talk that all the alts are pumping, and I'd been seeing it the same way. But once I opened the charts one by one, there turned out to be more to say than I expected. Let's go in order, from the big picture down to the short timeframes.

First, the weekly. The line running from the January high of 97900 to the May high of 82850 has capped every bounce this year. BTC couldn't get over it for eight months, and it now passes near 68K. BTC closed above it on August 12 and put clear distance above it last week with a big green candle. That single weekly candle went from 59K to 81K, and candles like that don't come around often.

The next big hurdle is the May high at 82850. On the downside, the July bottom at 57800 is the last line of defense for this picture.

Zooming into the daily, the lows have stepped up neatly: 57800 on July 1, 62275 on August 1, 62535 on August 14. That line has never broken. Lower highs from above and higher lows from below formed a two-month squeeze, which broke to the upside on August 19. Even on a deep pullback, 69K–70K is where the MA200, a weekly level and the 50% retracement overlap, so there's something there to catch it.

Let's also take a quick look at the 4H. Yesterday afternoon it tagged exactly 80K, left an upper wick and pulled back, but the pullback was shallow. On the second test early this morning, it broke through and ran to 81273. Both attempts came with volume. Right below, at 77300–78200, leveraged longs are packed in — give that up on a close and the 80K breakout is as good as erased.

Alts went along for the ride. Over the past seven days, XRP is up 50%, Solana 34%, and Doge and ETH around 31%. BTC is up 25%, so alts have outperformed. On the 20th–21st in particular, XRP gained 15% on each of those days, while BTC gained 5–7%.

But there's one odd thing. With alts running this hard, Bitcoin dominance should normally drop — instead it rose too, from 59.3 on August 17 to 60.25 now. On the 21st it broke through the 59.5 band and exited a two-month range to the upside.

Looking into why, Tether's share turned out to be the answer. Over the same period it dropped sharply from 8.4 to 6.9. That means cash parked in stablecoins went into buying coins. This isn't money just rotating within the market — it's money coming in from outside, so the pie itself got bigger. That's why alt market cap grew even though the alt share barely changed. That's how you get alts rising and dominance rising at the same time.

Within alts, though, the gap is big. The top few dozen have gone as much as BTC or more, but performance drops off sharply as you go down the rankings. Coins you've heard of have mostly moved, and those below them haven't caught up yet. Plenty of lower-ranked junk coins are actually in the red. So right now this is a majors market rather than an altcoin market. A real alt season only starts when dominance rolls over and the lower-ranked coins follow.

The futures side is leaning long. Binance top-trader long share is 68%, and funding is mostly positive, meaning longs are paying to hold. Liquidations have been quiet, but long-liquidation clusters are concentrated at 77300–78200 on BTC and 2425–2450 on ETH. A 2–4% dip could trigger forced selling there, so that's the thing to be most careful about in a rising market.

Outside crypto, things are moving the other way. Over the same ten days, the Nasdaq is -2.5% and the S&P -1.2%. Stocks fell while only crypto rallied. Gold, on the other hand, is up more than 6%, with silver about the same. The Dollar Index is down to 99, and USD/KRW slipped to 1385.

Moving with gold rather than stocks suggests this is less a risk-on rally and more a rise driven by dollar weakness. After rate-cut talk came out of Jackson Hole, the dollar slid and that money went into gold and crypto. On the news front, the SEC released a draft exemption rule for crypto-asset issuance, while on the flip side there were reports that whales took $1.2 billion in profits over three days.

The Kimchi premium — the gap between Korean exchange prices and global prices — is -0.2%, effectively zero. That means this rally is being led from offshore rather than pushed up by Korea, and it's also a sign Korean retail hasn't come in yet. The Fear & Greed Index went from 41 to 74 in a week; any higher and people will start talking about overheating.

The day after tomorrow, the 28th, is month-end options expiry, and the FOMC isn't until September 16, so that's still a way off. I'm watching just three things: whether BTC holds 80K, whether dominance drops back below 59.5, and how price reacts at the May high of 82850. Good luck, everyone — just for reference.