Bitcoin Dominance Increases as Halving Nears and BTC Price Lingers Near $61K

• BTC and other digital assets continue to be challenged by the market.

• Layer-1s and AI tokens have fared worse than bitcoin, leading to an increase in BTC’s market dominance

Bitcoin (BTC) has become more dominant in the crypto market thanks to impending halving and broader market risk aversion, despite the price correction

The largest cryptocurrency by market value was trading below $61,400 during Asian trading hours on Thursday, according to CoinDesk Indices data, as the sell-off in risk assets, fueled by difficult macroeconomic conditions, rages.

The CoinDesk 20, a measure of the world’s most liquid digital assets, is down 3.3%, trading at 2,125.

While bitcoin might be having a challenging moment, layer-1s and altcoins are doing worse. Top layer-1 tokens like Solana’s (SOL) are down over 20% in the past week. Avalanche’s (AVAX) is down 26%, Cardano’s (ADA) is down 23%, and Filecoin (FIL) is down 30%.

The bloodbath in Artificial Intelligence tokens, once the darling of the market, continued with some of the largest AI tokens down double digits during the last week. Render’s RNDR is down 13%, and Fetch.AI’s FET token is down 24%.

All this has led to bitcoin dominance moving up. Bitcoin dominance helps traders gauge the market mood and the token’s influence on altcoin trends. Bitcoin dominance is currently at 55.19%, up around 1.35% in the last week or 2.5% in the last month.

Meanwhile, in the run-up to the halving, Google search interest in the halving is hitting all-time highs, far surpassing search interest in the 2020 halving.

According to Google search trends data, there has been more search interest in the halving than in Ethereum, solana, or dogecoin.