Cryptocurrencies are crashing, but bitcoin isn’t falling as badly as the rest – Quartz

Cryptocurrency markets are crashing. Bitcoins price has fallen by about 20% in the last seven days, wiping out $7 billion of market value. But its doing better than other major cryptocurrencies like ether and ripple, which have lost 30% or more.

Bitcoins relative resilience in the current crash bolsters its status as the reserve currency of the cryptocurrency markets. Some $29.5 billion worth of bitcoin has been traded on global exchanges in the last month, compared to $26.3 billion worth of ethereum, according to data site Coin Marketcap. Not all traders are cashing out of ether into bitcoin, of course, the ether-Korean won currency pair is among the most actively traded in the last 24 hours, Coin Marketcaps data shows.

One indicator of bitcoins health relative to other cryptocurrencies is the so-called Bitcoin Dominance Index maintained by Coin Marketcap. It shows the total value of all bitcoin in circulation as a proportion of the value of all cryptocurrencies in circulation. As cryptos in general rallied this year, bitcoins dominance has fallen. But as markets have corrected in recent weeks, bitcoins dominance rose.

Bitcoin is still more than twice as valuable as ethereum, and about six times as valuable as Ripple. That gap could grow if the cryptomarket correction continues.

Read next: The strange mix of reasons why bitcoin has soared to all-time records

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Cryptocurrencies are crashing, but bitcoin isn't falling as badly as the rest - Quartz