CoinMarketCap data today revealed that Bitcoin’s recent price surge has allowed the overall crypto market cap to rise above $2 trillion for the first time in three months.
The crypto market surpassed the $2 trillion milestone in April because the prices of Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other cryptocurrencies rose ahead of the Coinbase exchange’s initial public offering. Bitcoin alone contributed $1 trillion to the crypto market cap at the time.
Then in May the U.S. considered a capital gains tax increase and the Chinese government cracked down on cryptocurrency mining operations. Those obstacles led Bitcoin’s price to drop from an all-time high of $64,000 to less than $30,000. The crypto market cap tumbled with it.
But the price of Bitcoin has rebounded recently, with CoinDesk data putting it at $46,300 at time of writing. That’s below the $53,000 minimum Reuters said it needed to maintain its $1 trillion market cap, but still enough to push the rest of the crypto market above that $2 trillion mark.
Bitcoin’s had some assistance from Ethereum, of course, which has aslo partially recovered from its own price drops. That’s probably at least partly because of Bitcoin’s own resurgence, but a recent hard fork that brought Ethereum closer to a proof-of-stake model has also helped.
The crypto market still has its share of obstacles, not least among them being the U.S. government’s recent indecisiveness regarding how digital assets should be regulated and how Bitcoin mining is going to recover following the loss of Chinese mining operations.
Still, passing the $2 trillion milestone means the crypto market doesn’t have to worry about living in a shadow of its former glory. Or at least it won't have to if the recovery continues. Technically it peaked at roughly $2.5 trillion in May, per CoinMarketCap, so it has another half a trillion dollars to go before it hits its previous peak.
