Bitcoin is trading near $79,000, up roughly 24% over the past week and on pace for its best run since 2023. Altcoins, the rest of the crypto market after Bitcoin, are supposed to be the more volatile side of the trade, swinging harder than Bitcoin in both directions. This week, that didn't happen—the broader market grew, just not enough to catch up.

That pattern shows up most clearly in a metric called Bitcoin dominance—Bitcoin's share of the entire crypto market. If altcoins were truly outperforming, dominance would fall as money spread into smaller coins; instead it climbed to around 61% this week before correcting to about 59%, near its highest level of the year.