Beta is how much a coin moves when Bitcoin moves a dollar: above 1.00 it amplifies Bitcoin, below 1.00 it lags. The desk splits that into what a coin catches on Bitcoin’s up-days and what it gives back on the down-days, because most coins do not catch the two in equal measure. Give back more than you catch and you are paying the alt tax.
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Alt Tax: The Major cross-section
The gap between top and bottom is wide and steady: ETH and SOL both above 1, XRP straddling parity from below, TOTAL3 near half. The β = 1 line is where a coin matches Bitcoin one-for-one; the majors held above 1 for weeks.
The Altcoin Tax
Five obsessives behind a spreadsheet have worked out, to four decimal places, exactly how much your favorite altcoin ETF fleeces you every time Bitcoin clears its throat. They will not — under any ci…
Bitcoin dominance
BTC.D sits at 59.4% and is rising. It topped at 61.14% on May 5 — now 1.74 points and 78 days off that peak — then bottomed at 57.94% on June 3, and has climbed 1.46 points over the seven days since. It trades above its 50-day average (58.84%) and a fraction under its 150-day (59.42%). Rising dominance means Bitcoin is taking market share back from the broad alt market.
Dominance and the basket agree this week. BTC.D is rising and TOTAL3 is in Trailing at 0.54 — both saying the same thing, Bitcoin gaining share while altcoins lag.
TOTAL3 — trailing, 226 days
This week, of every dollar Bitcoin gained the basket captured 54 cents, and of every dollar Bitcoin lost it gave back 42 cents — 1.3× more upside than downside. The asymmetry gap held near +0.12; no contraction, no turn signal. The pattern that precedes a turn is the gap closing toward zero, and it is not here.
At 0.54 the basket sits in Trailing, 0.31 above the Decoupled cut at 0.23 and 0.43 below the Outperform cut at 0.96 — well inside the band, not near either edge. This is day 226 in Trailing, past the 51-day median run. All four regimes have shown up in TOTAL3’s history, but the two tails are single episodes: Decoupled 63 days once, Extreme Outperform 58 days once.
XRP — trailing, 9 days
This week, of every dollar Bitcoin gained XRP captured 121 cents, and of every dollar Bitcoin lost it gave back 86 cents — 1.4× more upside than downside. The gap holds near +0.35; no contraction.
SOL — leading stable
This week, of every dollar Bitcoin gained SOL captured 121 cents and of every dollar Bitcoin lost it gave back 109 cents — 1.1× more upside than downside. The gap widened this week, with no contraction in sight.
ETH — leading, 21 days
This week, of every dollar Bitcoin gained ETH captured 160 cents, and of every dollar Bitcoin lost it gave back 127 cents — 1.3× more upside than downside. For 21 straight days the asymmetry has run in ETH’s favor. The gap held near +0.32; no contraction.
Only two regimes have ever shown up for ETH: Trailing (78% of the sample) and Outperform (22%). At has been in Outperform for 21 days, well past ETH’s 4.5-day median Outperform run — Ethereums’ leads are historically short.
What’s solid, what’s soft
Solid. The 60-day betas and the regime tags rest on full-sample rolling windows. All four flags are clear, and the tax runs favorable (up-capture above down-capture) for Altcoins this week.
Soft. The conditional betas are noisier than the symmetric 60-day. SOL’s up-capture carries the widest standard error on the desk — 32% of the estimate; the other conditional betas run 13–20%. Two coins sit near a boundary: XRP at 1.04 is 0.008 under the Outperform cut, nine days into Trailing and under its median run, so a small move flips it back; ETH at 1.30 is 0.056 above the same-direction cut with a historically short lead behind it.
The Beta Desk at Hayloo Unchained measures the relationship between Alts and Bitcoin, and flags what’s uncertain. You make the trading calls.