The largest cryptocurrency in the world, Bitcoin, reached $60,000 per coin last week. It also became worth over the world’s three biggest banks combined.
Based on publicly available data, Bitcoin exceeded the three highest-valued global banking giants by market cap.
The dominant cryptocurrency hit an earlier all-time high of $61,700, where Bitcoin’s market capitalization stood at nearly $1.15 trillion.
The combined market cap of JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China is $1.08 trillion.
Furthermore, it’s essential to note that Visa and Mastercard, the biggest payment networks, have a combined market cap of $871 billion, also now notably less than Bitcoin.
Since then, BTC/USD has witnessed a slight pullback, pushing its market capitalization down to $1.03 trillion, still holding the significant trillion-dollar-asset title.
That level was earlier tipped by analysts as a likely consolidation zone, something that remains the case after Monday’s fall took Bitcoin back below its prior all-time high hit in late February.
According to analysts, its ascent is impressive. The most famous cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, went from zero to $1 trillion in network value 3.6 times faster than Microsoft.
Analyzing the market capitalization data, on-chain analytics resource Ecoinometrics added that as of Saturday, Bitcoin totaled 45% of the gold held in investment vehicles and 10% of the physical gold market as a whole.
In order to eclipse gold entirely, BTC/USD would need to trade at $590,000.
Retail investors purchased 187,426 BTC for Q1 2021
The 2017 Bitcoin bull run was driven by retail traders, long-term crypto believers, and Bitcoin whales. But, the tide turned in 2020 as institutional investors became the catalyst for the latest crypto bull run.
However, JPMorgan Chase’s data shows that retail traders have made a strong comeback in Q1 of 2021. JPMorgan analysts used data from Square and Paypal to determine that retail investors purchased 187,426 BTC for Q1 2021, which is more than the institutional purchase of 172,684 BTC throughout the same period.
Furthermore, the total volume of crypto transactions from major South Korean crypto exchanges during a 24-hour on Sunday was $14.6 billion, exceeding the $14.5 billion handled by South Korea’s Composite Stock Price Index on March 12.
