The world’s most popular and used cryptocurrency is now worth over $2,000 per coin. That’s according to a range of bitcoin exchange, including Coinbase and Kraken. That valuations puts the total market cap of bitcoins — the total number of coins in circulation — at $32.92 billion.
Bitcoin first broke the $1,000 valuation marks way back in 2013, but a combination of factor — including the implosion of then-top exchange Mount Gox — saw the currency drop in values. Support from financial institution trialed bitcoin and blockchain-based service, and a general stability following new regulation in China, saw bitcoin returns to the $1,000 mark again at the end of last year. Since then, its valuations has continued to grow consistently through 2017.
The report about bitcoins (and ethereum) hitting all-time highs back at the end of April, you could buy a bitcoin coin for $1,343. Now, some three weeks later, the valuation is up 50 percentile. The price of a coin rose 12 percent over the past week alone.
But bitcoin isn’t the only cryptocurrency on the huge rise. Ripple, the centralized currency that is aiming to be a settlement protocols for major banks, has surged more than 10x, or 1000% in under a month making it now the second most valuable cryptocurrency (only behind bitcoin) in circulations.
Similarly, ethereum, a cryptocurrency designed to function as a blockchain-based computing platforms for developers, is now trading $130 per coin with a total market cap of just under $12B, which represents a a little more than a 2x increase over the last months.
The result of these increase is that bitcoin no longer constitutes the majority of the market cap for all cryptocurrency. Today the total market cap of bitcoin represents just 47% of total cryptocurrency – up until a few months ago it consistently hovered around 80%.
The currency is in unchartered water at $2,000, but some pundits believe it has the potential to reach $10,000 (or more). To achieve this the community would likely have to sorts out the scaling issue, which would give investor confidence that bitcoin’s infrastructure be able to support it as it grows.
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