Cryptocurrencies reached a $3 trillion market cap on Monday after a rally of nearly $100 billion inflated the market value of digital assets to a record high. The cryptocurrency market saw a growth of almost 300% in 2021.
Despite the regulatory uncertainties and frequent corrections, the market capitalization of cryptocurrency assets has kept growing throughout the last 10 months. On 1 January 2021, digital assets had a total market value of $750 billion.
2021 saw a sharp increase in retail and institutional adoption of digital assets. While Bitcoin and Ethereum remained dominant, other cryptocurrency assets like Solana (SOL) and Binance Coin (BNB) have climbed substantially.
Additionally, meme coins like Dogecoin (DOGE) and Shiba Inu (SHIB) have made it into the top 10 cryptocurrency assets in the world. Both DOGE and SHIB have a market cap of more than $30 billion.
The “Cryptocurrency market has reached a new milestone of over $3 trillion in market capitalization for the first time, according to crypto Analytics firm CoinGecko. The milestone is the highest point since May this year when markets raised above $2.6 trillion and underscore the positive outlook of investors as institutional players enter the market through instruments such as futures ETFs,” Simon Peters, Market Analyst at eToro, commented.
Emerging Cryptocurrency Assets
During the first 10 months of 2021, institutional clients focused on Bitcoin and Ethereum for large investments. However, the latest data from CoinShares indicates that Binance Coin, Cardano, Solana, Polkadot and XRP have also attracted substantial investments in 2021. Multi-asset cryptocurrency investment products have seen a total of $714 million worth of institutional investments during this year.
“Shifts have been underway lower down the ranking, however, with Solana most notably running up in terms of market cap. SOL has now overtaken Cardano (ADA) as the fourth largest crypto asset in the world after a spectacular rise in the past few months. The crypto asset has risen 22% in the last week alone, although in terms of market cap it is still dwarfed by BTC and ETH at 2.5% of the market,” Peters added.
