Cryptocurrency market cap hit a new all-time high of $3 trillion, driven by altcoins.
All cryptocurrencies, from the market gather value for $ 3.083.323.553.707 USD, about $3,08 trillion at the time of writing. In the past month, the cryptocurrency market cap has grown by 28%, according to data from CoinGecko. At the end of October, the crypto industry marked what was its latest all-time high, at $2,77 trillion. The momentum that the cryptocurrency market is currently experiencing is related to the exponential growth of Bitcoin (BTC) and the main altcoins in the industry.
Source: CoinGecko
Recently, Ethereum (ETH), Solana (SOL), Polkadot (DOT) and Terra (LUNA) broke new all-time highs, as did Metaverse tokens like Axie Infinity (ASX), Decentraland (MANA), The Sandbox (SAND) and Enjin Coin (ENJ).
In the case of Ethereum, which is the second most important cryptocurrency in the industry, its value is very close to $5.000 per unit. This Monday, ETH reached a new ATH of $4.857. Solana and Terra show a growth of more than 30% in the last month, while Metaverse and Ethereum tokens are growing by XNUMX%. NFT are being driven by Facebook’s entry into virtual worlds. Since the social media giant announced its name change to Meta, these tokens have grown exponentially.
61% of the current cryptocurrency market cap is dominated by Bitcoin and Ethereum, the two largest cryptocurrencies in the world, whose market caps are $1,28 trillion and $570.400 billion, respectively.
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$3 trillion for the first time
Since their inception, this is the first time that the total market capitalization of all cryptocurrencies has surpassed $3 trillion. In the case of altcoins, the market has reached a new record of $1,79 trillion in total. Its previous high was seen in October of this year, when it surpassed $1,4 trillion. During the previous bull cycle, seen between late 2017 and early 2018, the market capitalization of all altcoins reached $540.000 billion, meaning that the market has grown by 220% to date.
Bitcoin Growth
In January of this year, when the cryptocurrency market cap was close to $800.000 billion, Cathie Wood, CEO of digital asset management company Ark Investment Management, claimed that Bitcoin could eventually surpass the market cap of gold if it reached $2 trillion. Now, although the total value of bitcoins currently in circulation has not yet surpassed this value, the market-leading cryptocurrency has grown by 120% so far this year, almost tripling its market cap of around $500.000 billion in January.
The arrival of Bitcoin ETFs, or exchange-traded funds, in the United States, approved by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) last month, has pushed the unit value of Bitcoin to a new all-time high of $68.640 per BTC, reached yesterday. For analysts, although the ETFs approved in the country are linked to Bitcoin futures contracts, and do not follow the cryptocurrency in the spot market, their approval is a sign of the current importance of cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency ETFs can make the crypto market continue to grow and consolidate at new highs in the future.
Currently, Bitcoin has surpassed several of the world's leading companies, such as Facebook and Tesla, in terms of market capitalization.
Altcoins in the market
The rise in value that several of the main altcoins are currently experiencing has a lot to do with the growing interest and demand for decentralized finance protocols (DeFi), interest in NFTs and games blockchain and the frenzy that the Metaverse is awakening.
Third-generation blockchain cryptocurrencies, focused on scalability and interoperability, are also growing exponentially, as they increase in the number of active users and total transaction volume. Although commission costs on Ethereum have dropped by about 30% in the last week, fees are still high for many, especially for retail investors who want to move little value within this network. At the time of this writing, commission costs on Ethereum, for simple transactions, are around $ 45 dollars; while last week they were close to $60. Due to these high costs, many users are migrating to more scalable networks, which allow for quick transactions and more accessible interaction with applications and protocols.
Bitcoin vs Altcoins
Messari data shows that the total value collected in the Ethereum ecosystem is greater than the $ 800.000 million dollars, dominating around 28% of the entire crypto industry. Over the past year, Bitcoin's dominance has fallen 18% against altcoins.
Bitcoin's growth over the past 12 months has been 350%, while ETH, SOL, DOT and LUNA have grown by 960%, 12.000%, 1.100% and 17.600%, respectively. For NFT and Metaverse tokens, the annual appreciation has been over 3.500% for MANA and SAND, while AXS has appreciated by 108.000% and EJN by 2.700% in the last year.
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