Bitcoin’s Q4 Dominance: Even a Heavy Fall Can’t Stop the King from Crushing the Crypto Market

Bitcoin stumbles, but the altcoin pack gets trampled. The fourth quarter delivered a classic crypto masterclass in relative strength, proving that a wounded king still rules the jungle.

The Throne Holds Firm

While headlines screamed about price declines, the real story unfolded beneath the surface. Market share metrics tell a tale of brutal consolidation. Capital didn't just flee—it performed a strategic retreat into the perceived safety and liquidity of the original digital asset, leaving smaller projects gasping for air.

Liquidity Over Hype

When volatility spikes, traders bypass speculative narratives for cold, hard liquidity. Bitcoin's deep markets and institutional foothold acted as a harbor in the storm, a dynamic that consistently reshuffles the crypto hierarchy during downturns. It's the financial equivalent of opting for a fortress over a treehouse.

A Cynical Take on 'Diversification'

Portfolio managers who spent all year talking about altcoin diversification suddenly remembered what 'market cap' and 'volume' mean. It turns out a 10% drop in a trillion-dollar asset feels different than a 10% drop in something you found on a meme forum last Tuesday—who knew?

The quarter's lesson was blunt: in crypto's Darwinian arena, dominance isn't about never falling. It's about who gets back up while everyone else is still flat on the mat.

In brief

• Bitcoin falls about 26% in Q4, but resists better than the overall crypto market, which remained under pressure.
• The market remains fragile, dominated by liquidations and a failed rotation to altcoins, while BTC oscillates between $85,000 and $94,000.
• In this climate of hesitation, Michael Saylor stays the course and continues accumulating bitcoin via Strategy.

A bitcoin falling back, but still the anchor of the crypto market

The painful figure is clear: about 26% decrease over the quarter, for a price around $86,000. On paper, it’s a slap. In the reality of the crypto market, it’s almost a privilege. The overall market would have done slightly worse, around 27.5% over the same period. In other words, the pain is shared, but BTC keeps the role of the least feverish patient.

And this fall has a very concrete consequence on the microstructure of the market: when a drop brought it back to $86,700, a wave of liquidations was immediately observed, with more than $210 million wiped out in one hour and more than $450 million over 24 hours. A sign that many positions were still too exposed to leverage.

The recent session sums up the mood: more than 4% drop in 24 hours, a total capitalization down about 3.8%, and the market falls back below the symbolic $3 trillion mark. Add to that a Fear and Greed still on the Fear side, and you get a crypto market where courage is rare, and where every rebound feels like a question asked too loudly in an already nervous room.

And then there’s the invisible mechanism: liquidations. CoinGlass mentions more than $658 million liquidated during the drop. This detail matters, because it explains why movements sometimes seem exaggerated: when leverage bursts, it’s not a rational sale, it’s a trap opening under the positions.

Bitcoin dominance: rotation happened, but conviction has not returned

According to Bitcoin Vector, the first semester was clearly BTC-led: dominance was rising, Bitcoin played the guide role, and the crypto market followed the trail. Then, in the second semester, the scenario reversed. Dominance began to slip, and capital attempted a rotation towards Ether and other majors, a classic in theory.

Except this rotation did not result in new leadership. It mainly created a gray area. bitcoin lost its locomotive aura, without the altcoin market really taking over. Result: a crypto market searching for a center of gravity and, for lack of better, intermittently returning to BTC, like returning to a refuge that is criticized but known inside out.

This hesitation is also visible in price structure: bitcoin WOULD be stuck between $85,000 and $94,000, with rebounds often sold off as soon as they appear. Why? Because many buyers would have positioned themselves near the all-time high of October and take advantage of any rise to lighten their positions without too much damage.

Result, a psychological ceiling forms and liquidity becomes thinner: it rises, it hits resistance, it falls back. In this context, Michael Saylor does not deviate: through Strategy, he continues his accumulation strategy and keeps buying bitcoin, betting on these retracements as entry points rather than panic signals.

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