Bitcoin’s recovery in 2019 has been remarkable. After starting the year at $3800, Bitcoin last week reached an 18-month high of USD $13,768. Many seem to draw a resemblance from the 2017 bull market, however, there is a stark difference: AltCoins.

In the bull market of 2017, AltCoins were being carried by Bitcoin’s rising tide. So far in 2019, this has not been the case with the rest of the ecosystem left far behind. Many are anxiously waiting for an AltCoin season, but there has been no trace of it this year. Some metrics suggest this could be due to a new breed of buyers driving the Bitcoin price action, growing confidence in Bitcoin and weakening confidence in altcoins.

Earlier trader Josh Olszewicz had said:

“Bitcoin makes a run, altcoins follow in USD terms but are unable to maintain the pace in BTC terms, and then people take profit in Bitcoin and those funds rotate into the higher cap stuff, Ethereum, Litecoin, and Monero, etc, then eventually into the lower cap stuff as Bitcoin goes sideways and consolidates.”

He thinks that this is could be due to higher awareness, with fewer people needing to Google Bitcoin to understand what it is and also because a fundamentally different set of buyers have been pushing up the price.

Longhash reports that 67% of cryptos are still under 90% from their all-time highs. Consequently, Bitcoin’s market dominance is over 60% for the first time since the winter of 2017. There is other bad news for AltCoins too. Small Cap Altcoins are down 54% against bitcoin in 3 months.

The surge in Bitcoin’s price has also caused a lot of other large-cap altcoins to increase in value in USD terms. Ethereum (ETH), for example, is up 82% against the dollar, while Litecoin (LTC) is up 50%. However, it appears that the last few spikes in Bitcoin’s price have left altcoins behind.

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