The overall market cap of cryptocurrency assets touched an all-time high of $1.9 trillion on 30 March after Bitcoin and Ethereum posted significant gains in the last 24 hours. The cryptocurrency market started this year with a market cap of nearly $750 billion.
According to the latest data published by Coinmarketcap, the world’s largest cryptocurrency Bitcoin now has a market cap of more than $1.1 trillion. Ethereum is the second-most valuable cryptocurrency in the world with a market cap of nearly $210 billion.
The market cap of digital currencies received a push from PayPal’s recent crypto announcement. The US-based payments company mentioned that it will allow American users to pay merchants with cryptocurrency assets.
Institutional adoption of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency assets has increased significantly in the last few months. Visa, a leading financial firm, announced yesterday that it will allow its partners to settle fiat transactions on the Ethereum blockchain.
“We see increasing demand from consumers across the world to be able to access, hold and use digital currencies and we’re seeing demand from our clients to be able to build products that provide that access for consumers,” Cuy Sheffield, Head of Crypto at Visa said in a statement yesterday.
Apart from companies like PayPal and Visa, payments giant Mastercard announced in February 2021 that the company is planning to support cryptocurrency payments this year. Raj Dhamodharan, EVP Blockchain and Digital Partnerships at Mastercard, mentioned that the company has already started working on the integration of selected cryptocurrency assets on its network. Tesla, the world’s largest electric-car maker, announced earlier this month that US-based consumers can now use Bitcoin to buy Tesla products.
Bitcoin and Ethereum account for more than 70% of the overall cryptocurrency market cap. Digital currencies like Binance Coin, Polkadot, Cardano and XRP reported strong gains during the last few months. With a market cap of nearly $1.9 trillion, the cryptocurrency market is now more valuable than the entire GDP of Canada.
