Today, the overall market capitalization of cryptocurrencies has exceeded $2.75 trillion according to data from TradingView.
This is the maximum value reached in 2024.
The capitalization of the crypto market
The market capitalization of the cryptocurrency market is nothing more than the sum of the market capitalizations of all monitored cryptocurrencies.
However, this is a purely theoretical figure, obtained by multiplying the price of a single token by the total number of tokens in circulation for each cryptocurrency.
For example, if one Bitcoin is worth around $82,000 and there are just under 19.8 million Bitcoins in circulation, its market cap is around $1.6 trillion. By carrying out this calculation for all the cryptocurrencies present on the crypto markets and monitored, and adding all the capitalizations, we obtain the overall market capitalization of the crypto.
During the great speculative bubble of 2021, the maximum peak was reached shortly before mid-November, above $2.9 trillion.
In March this year, when Bitcoin reached new highs, the total capitalization of crypto markets exceeded 2.72 trillion, so today’s 2.75 trillion is the yearly high but not the highest historical.
Bitcoin market capitalization
Bitcoin, on the other hand, marked today not only its new all-time high price, but also in terms of market capitalization.
But why then is the market capitalization of cryptos still lower than the 2021 peak?
When in November three years ago the BTC price reached the all-time high of around $69,000, its peak capitalization was around $1.2 trillion.
Since then, not only has the price increased, but the BTC in circulation has also increased, so that in February of this year the 1.2 trillion mark was exceeded, and in March the 1.4 trillion mark was exceeded. also been exceeded.
The surpassing of 1.5 trillion dollars took place on November 6, the day of Trump’s victory in the US presidential elections, and since then it has increased further, reaching more than 1.6 trillion today.
The market capitalization of altcoins
However, counterbalancing Bitcoin’s record highs is Ethereum, which is still far from 2021 highs.
ETH’s all-time high is still near $4,900 from November 2021, which caused it to also record its market cap’s all-time high at nearly $560 billion.
In 2024, the price of Ethereum reached around $4,100, but its market capitalization did not exceed $470 billion. Also note that for approximately two years the number of ETH in circulation has no longer increased.
So, already in March this year, Ethereum’s market capitalization was $90 billion lower than the November 2021 peak, while Bitcoin’s was around $200 billion higher.
However, when it comes to altcoins, very few have seen highs in March this year like Bitcoin, while the vast majority of others have had a price trend more similar to Ethereum.
Thus, the overall market capitalization of cryptocurrencies in March was still 180 billion lower than the all-time high of 2021.
Even today, while Bitcoin’s market cap surpasses the 2021 peak of $400 billion, Ethereum’s is still $180 billion lower, and this applies to many altcoins as well.
So despite record capitalization for Bitcoin, that of the crypto market is not yet at its all-time high.
The Total3
However, this data also takes into account the market capitalizations of stablecoins, which have nothing to do with their prices, which are stable, but only with the number of tokens in circulation.
To better analyze the trend in the true capitalization of the cryptocurrency market, TradingView created an index called Total3, which calculates the overall market capitalization of cryptocurrencies excluding Bitcoin, Ethereum and especially stablecoins.
Total3 therefore measures the evolution over time of the market capitalization of altcoins only, excluding Ethereum.
Total3’s all-time high is obviously still that of November 2021, when it exceeded $1.130 billion.
Note that in March of this year, Total3 did not even manage to exceed 790 billion dollars, and it is precisely because of these 340 billion less than the new historical record for the overall market capitalization of cryptos was not achieved.
In fact, today it is even lower than 740 billion, which is 50 billion lower than in March.
As a result, many more billions are missing from the market cap of altcoins compared to those missing from Ethereum, and only Bitcoin and other rare cryptocurrencies are currently reaching all-time highs in terms of market cap.
The stablecoin
An entirely different discussion is that regarding stablecoin market capitalization.
Despite this, even stablecoins have not reached all-time highs.
It should be noted, however, that the all-time high in the market capitalization of stablecoins was not reached in November 2021, but in May 2022 before the implosion of UST (the Terra/Luna stablecoin).
In November 2021, $150 billion was reached, but in May 2022, it almost reached 190.
In April this year, the overall market capitalization of stablecoins stood at around 160 billion, and today it is around 180 billion, about 10 billion less than the all-time high in 2022.
