The latest data from CoinGecko suggests that the total market cap of all the listed cryptocurrency has now reached the dizzying heights of $3 trillion. It comes as Bitcoin and Ethereum record new highs of over $66,000 and $4,790 respectively. Regarding the cumulative market cap, three milestones have been met this year. On January 7 it hit $1 trillion, on April 6 it hit $2 trillion and as of today it has now hit $3 trillion.
In all, CoinGecko contains information on 10,418 cryptocurrencies. Each of these cryptos are contributing to the new cumulative market cap with the two biggest players being Bitcoin and Ethereum which have market caps of $1.24 trillion and $567 billion respectively. In recent days, other growing cryptocurrencies such as Solana and Polkadot have been increasing in value and the memecoin Shiba Inu went wild for a bit though that’s now down 16.6% over the last seven days.
Two things are going on with Bitcoin that could propel the market cap even further in the coming weeks. Firstly, some analysts are predicting the Bitcoin will breakout and reach $75,000 by the end of the year. The second reason we could see more interest is because the Bitcoin network will undergo a softfork in six days that has been dubbed Taproot. It will introduce more efficient smart contracts and improve the privacy of the Lightning Network by making channels look like normal Bitcoin transactions.
Last week, Philip Hammond, a former UK Chancellor, said that he sees the use of crypto technology in big finance inevitable now. Moves to make cryptocurrencies a mainstream investing option can be seen in Australia too where a spot exchange-traded fund (ETF), that handles Bitcoin and Ethereum, was approved by the country’s securities watchdog.