Bitcoin has been on a spectacular run over the past three months, capping off 2024 with an impressive 125% gain, cryptocurrency data show.

The rally continued into 2025, with the world’s largest crypto hitting a record high of U$108,000 on January 20 before closing the month with a solid 6% increase. This strong performance pushes bitcoin to levels way above those seen last year, new highs.

Bitcoin's dominance ratio hit nearly 61.5% last week, marking the highest share since February 2021, according to a report on CryptoPresales.com, a website claiming to track 18,896 cryptocurrencies trading on 402 exchanges. The metric measures the coin's market cap in relation to the total cryptocurrency market.

The cryptocurrency’s dominance ratio has seen sharp fluctuations over the years. After standing at around 95% in 2016 and 2017, when cryptos were still far away from wider adoption, it plunged to 55% in 2018. A year later, it skyrocketed to over 70% again.

Several developments propelled digital currencies to new heights in 2024. Regulatory clarity in major markets, the approval of bitcoin spot ETFs, advancements in blockchain technology, and the growth of decentralized finance ( DeFi ) have fuelled both institutional and retail adoption of cryptocurrencies, CryptoPresales.com says.

Bitcoin was not the only cryptocurrency to experience significant market share gains, the website says, citing data from Tradingview. XRP also saw a meteoric rise, nearly tripling its dominance from 1.66% in February last year to 4.5% last week. Solana`s market share inched up to 3.1% during the same period.

On the other hand, ethereum, the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, continued to lose market share. Last week, ETH accounted for only 10.2% of the total crypto market value, 7% less than in the same month a year ago, and only half its market share peak from September 2022, when the coin held around 20% of the market, CryptoPresales.com says.