By Akanimo Sampson
Crypto-currency market on Monday recorded another milestone as its capitalisation hit an all-time peak of $2 trillion on the back of sustained demand from both institutional and retail investors over the past few months.
According to data and market trackers, CoinGecko and Blockfolio, the crypto market cap was at $2.02 trillion by Monday afternoon.
The surge was led by bitcoin, which hit its own milestone by holding at a $1 trillion market cap for one week. Bitcoin has led the massive rally, hitting a lifetime peak of more than $61,000 in mid-March. Analysts feel as long as bitcoin stays above $53,000, it will be able to maintain its $1 trillion market cap.
Ethereum, which hit a record high of $2,144.99 last Friday, was the second largest cryptocurrency. Its market cap was $244 billion on Monday.
“Momentum and interest have begun to expand beyond bitcoin and ethereum,” said Paolo Ardoino, chief technology officer at crypto exchange Bitfinex.
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“As the industry continues to mature, we expect more blockchain-based applications to be introduced to the world, and coinciding with that, a surge of interest around other alternative assets… as they become more market-ready.”
Experts are expecting the valuation to keep rising.
Speaking to Markets Insider, Co-founder of Chainlink, Sergey Nazarov, said: “While $2 trillion in market cap is a sizable amount of value stored in the blockchain format, it is still less than 1% of the value that can be stored in that format, which means there is still much further to go in terms of both market cap and overall smart contract adoption.”
Blockchain data provider Glassnode, in a research report, said the fact that bitcoin has held the $1 trillion market cap for one week is a “strong vote of confidence for bitcoin and the cryptocurrency asset class as a whole.”
Bitcoin has risen more than 100% this year, while ethereum has gained nearly 190%. Both have massively outperformed traditional asset classes, bolstered by the entry of mainstream companies and large investors into the cryptocurrency world, including Tesla Inc and BNY Mellon.
