Digital Currency Market Cap Crosses $90 Billion(!)
Led by the likes of Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple and Litecoin, the total value of the cryptocurrency market is going vertical, nearly tripling in size since the turn of May.
Bitcoin’s total market cap struck $40 billion for the first time in history today, with over $1.6 billion in trading over a 24-hour period. The world’s most prominent cryptocurrency is up over 8% in the same period. A hunch toward the possible surge is the ‘scaling consensus’ achieved by companies ruling over 80% of the hashing power yesterday.
Bitcoin has added over $1,000 to its value this month alone, with a week to go. In 2017, bitcoin has altogether gained over 140%.
Recent legislative developments in Japan that favor digital currencies have spurred demand in what has been the world’s largest bitcoin trading market for a number of months up to this week. An executive from Tokyo-based bitcoin exchange bitFlyer, an industry startup that is working with retail partners to enable cryptocurrency payments, estimates that 300,000 Japanese stores could accept bitcoin this year.
However, bitcoin’s gains have been gazumped by other cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin’s dominance among its crypto cousins is on the wane, as it drops to 44% of the total market capitalization of the digital currency ecosystem, an all-time low.
Ethereum, the second largest cryptocurrency or the largest ‘altcoin’ has gained over a remarkable 3000% since the turn of the year.
Last week, the Ethereum network scaled over 50% of bitcoin’s transaction volumes. This week’s gains have undoubtedly been spurred on by the backing of industry giants like Toyota, Samsung, post-trade services giant DTCC – which handles transactions in the trillion and, MUFG – Japan’s largest bank among several others, who joined the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA). With 116 members, the EEA is a cross-industry collaborative working toward using the open-source Ethereum’s technology toward developing enterprise blockchain solutions.
The total market cap of Ethereum has now scaled over $20 billion, up from less than $700 million in January,
Ripple, the third largest cryptocurrency with a market cap of over $13 billion has grown more than any other major cryptocurrency this year. Developed for enterprises, particularly banks, San Francisco-based FinTech startup Ripple is quickly becoming a solution tapped by banks for global remittances at near-instant speeds and significantly lower costs.
Ripple boasted of having met the transactional throughput of Visa, the world’s largest payments network in April. At the time, Ripple had soared to a 2-year high but that was merely the beginning of the boom. Ripple soon reached an all-time high in mid-April. Spanish banking giant BBVA, a Ripple member bank, successfully trialed a money transfer from Spain to Mexico , a transaction that took seconds.
In a single day toward the end of April, Ripple had gained nearly a third of its value. This month, Ripple shot up further, overtaking Ethereum briefly as the company’s technology chief unveiled plans to ‘become more decentralized than Bitcoin’.
Altogether, Ripple has gained nearly 6000% this year, with most of those gains coming during the last 60 days.
A newcomer to the high charts, NEM is #4 on the list amid gains of over 500% in May. Its growth has been attributed to the growing altcoin markets of Japan.
Overall, the cryptocurrency market has grown over 5x this year and has come a long way since humble beginnings earlier this decade.
Charts from CoinmarketCap.
Featured image from Shutterstock.
