Crypto Market Exceeds $3 Trillion for the First Time

The cryptocurrency market has hit a new milestone in topping a record high of US$3 trillion market cap, according to analytics website CoinGecko.

Bitcoin and Ethereum Reach New ATHs

The crypto market hit an all-time high (ATH) of US$3 trillion on November 8, thanks to the combined efforts of two of the most traded cryptocurrencies, Ether (ETH) and Bitcoin (BTC). The two assets smashed records in both price and trading volumes. 

Bitcoin broke slightly above its previous ATH of US$67,000 by hitting $$68,641.57, as per data from CoinGecko. Ethereum saw substantial gains as well, seeing an ATH of US$4,857.25 the same day.

Main drivers for the ETH price surge include the burning mechanism, which is eliminating circulating coins, the transition to a PoS system with the advent of ETH 2.0, the NFT investing frenzy, along with speculations of its involvement in the metaverse.

The rumours started circulating when Vitalik Buterin predicted that Ethereum could be the network running the metaverse within 10 years.

Bitcoin Futures ETFs Drive Markets

With Bitcoin, we’ve seen a revived interest from institutional clients with the launch of Bitcoin futures ETFs. Two Bitcoin ETFs broke records on their first days. ProShares’ BITO recorded over US$550 million in trading volume from crypto-hungry investors, and Australia’s BetaShares crypto ETF smashed Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) trading records on its debut – over A$40 million on the first day, with A$5.2 million traded in five minutes.

The crypto market currently has a 24-hour trading volume of US$138 billion – this equates to the total market cap in March 2019.

Despite the new Bitcoin ATH, its dominance is still below 50 percent, now marked at 42.8 percent. Back on September 6, 2019, BTC was the undisputed leader of the market with 70.8 percent dominance.