By
Chimamanda U. Martha
April 25th, 2024
The value of bitcoin continues to break new records amid rising investor demand, while crytocurrency market cap reaches historic mark.
The combined value of all digital currencies surged to a record level today, exceeding $127 billion for the first time in its history. The record comes just four days since the cryptocurrency market cap hit its previous all-time high of $117 billion.
Bitcoin, meantime, continues its upward trend and has reached a new record today, rising above its previous high of $3,484. According to CoinMarketCap, bitcoin price hit yet another all-time high of $3538, with its market cap surging to $58,3 billion. At press time, bitcoin is trading at $3513 per coin, while its market cap is standing at more than $57 million.
Other top cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, IOTA, and NEO, are on the rise as well.
IOTA saw its market cap reach $1.7 billion, rising from $1.1 billion, while Neo, previously known as Antshares, for the first time surpassed $1 billion and is now estimated at more than $1.6 billion. Ether, the native cryptocurrency on the ethereum network, raised its total market cap to $28 billion, up from $21 billion a week ago. Litecoin recorded small gains as well, with its market cap now amounting to over $2,4 billion. Ethereum Classic and Ripple are the only cryptocurrencies that slightly decreased.
Bitcoin Cash, which was created after last week’s hard fork implementation, increased to $5.4 billion from $5.1 billion. Currently, it is trading at $332 per BCH and has the fourth largest market cap. A lot of exchanges and digital wallet providers have already added the new digital currency, although it was earlier denied by some exchanges. This week, two digital currency exchanges, the Living Room of Satoshi and Rocketr, have announced support for Bitcoin Cash.
Bitcoin’s new record marks the cryptocurrency’s recovery from its downturn earlier this month after the launch of Bitcoin Cash on August 1. SegWit was proposed to overcome some of Bitcoin’s issues, such as transaction sped and limit of data on bitcoin blocks. A few days ago, the upgrade achieved a lock-in threshold and is expected to be activated later this month once the 2,016 block difficulty adjustment period is finished.
The growing price also shows that investors are becoming more confident about bitcoin. Analysts, meantime, are mostly positive about the future of the digital currency. Ronnie Moas, the founder of Standpoint Research, has recently claimed that bitcoin price can achieve $5,000 within the year. Another expert John McAfee has even higher expectations, as he predicts that the value will increase to more than $500,000 in three years. Sheba Jafari, the head of technical strategy at Goldman Sachs, forecasts that bitcoin price has the potential to extend as far as 3,915.