BTC dominance is sinking and sinking.
I don't really like this.
Altcoins are thriving just as before the crash and it gets worst.
Its likely part of a cycle - I (speculatively) can see an alt bubble followed by a BTC surge
I hope you're right starmman, but, it just doesn't look like BTC will ever regain its dominance to even the 50% level. Hell, look at ripple up 50%, people were wiped out on that recently and it just doesn't seem to matter. I consider most alts to be shit, but, I guess when it's all speculating it doesn't really matter that they are shit.
Altcoins are predominantly denominated in BTC. So when BTC goes up by X%, alts will usually go up by at least X% as well in terms of USD. This will cause people to think that alts are entering a bull run, which might trigger buy orders that will drive up their price in terms of BTC as well, which will ultimately lead to a price rise above the X% of BTC in terms of USD.
Why is that happening only now and not before?
Before people would only pay attention to BTC/xyzcoin trading pairs.
Now we have the copycat namesake and all BCHBCCBcash that is being used to move and pump/dump between alt trading pairs.
BCH and BTG are like us creating another USD and having special interest groups declare it legal tender.
This "trend" needs to be addressed much like fraudulent ICO's have.
This really falls on the responsibilities of the exchanges.
You are describing aspects of the free market, and if exchanges can make money on it, then they will do it.
Sure there could be some issues of politiking and stealing of BTC's namesake, and perhaps much of this will get sorted over time with whatever coin(s) have the best fundamentals... It could take several years for folks to realize some of the differences.... and in the meantime, there is a large bit of wild, wild west out there, including exchanges that also want to convolute and get into the misleading game.