By Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The cryptocurrency market capitalization hit an all-time peak of $2 trillion on Monday, according to data and market trackers CoinGecko and Blockfolio, as gains over the last several months attracted demand from both institutional and retail investors.
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At midday, the crypto market cap was at $2.02 trillion.
The surge in crypto market cap was led by bitcoin, which hit its own milestone by holding the $1 trillion market cap for one whole week. Bitcoin was last up 1% at $58,820. Since hitting a lifetime peak of more than $61,000, but has since traded in a relatively narrow range.
Analysts said as long as bitcoin stays above $53,000, it will be able to maintain its $1 trillion market cap.
Ethereum, the second largest cryptocurrency in terms of market cap, was up 1.5% at $2,107, with a market cap of $244 billion. It hit a record high of $2,144.99 last Friday.
"While two trillion dollars in market cap is a sizable amount of value stored in the blockchain format, it is still less than 1% of the value that can be stored in that format, which means there is still much further to go in terms of both market cap and overall smart contract adoption," said Sergey Nazarov, co-founder of Chainlink, a decentralized network that provides data to smart contracts on the blockchain.
Blockchain data provider Glassnode said, in a research report, that the fact that bitcoin has held the $1 trillion market cap for one week is a "strong vote of confidence for bitcoin and the cryptocurrency asset class as a whole."
It added that on-chain activity continues to reinforce bitcoin's robust position, with a volume equivalent to over 10% of circulating supply transacting above the $1 trillion threshold.
Bitcoin has risen more than 100% this year, while ethereum has gained nearly 190%. Both have massively outperformed traditional asset classes, bolstered by the entry of mainstream companies and large investors into the cryptocurrency world, including Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) Inc and BNY Mellon (NYSE:BK).
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