Cryptocurrencies’ market cap hits record $200 billion

The Cryptocurrency market capitalization reached a new record-breaking high of $200 billion this Friday, with the biggest cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, contributing 60%.

The price of Bitcoin has been rising for the past few weeks and its value has seen more than a tenfold increase over the past 12 months. This Friday, it reached its new all-time high of $7,500 on the Luxembourg-based Bitstamp exchange, raising its market capitalization over $125 billion.

Experts believe that there are two major events contributing to this upsurge. One event is the recent announcement by the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) group about the potential launch of Bitcoin futures later this year. CME Group is the world’s largest derivatives exchange. On November 2, it announced its intention to list Bitcoin Futures contracts. CEO of Latium, David Johnson, commented on CME’s decision. “Opening a first of its kind futures market is a game changer for the global acceptance of Bitcoin as a real-world currency,” he said.

The other event believed to have caused this upsurge is the upcoming SegWit2x hard fork scheduled to occur around November 16th. According to the Prague-based cryptocurrency exchange, Changelly, this fork is actually strongly influencing markets. The CEO of Changelly, Konstantin Gladych, said, “We’ve seen 3x increased demand on buying Bitcoin for the last few days on Changelly.” He sees this hard fork as the key reason for the increase in Bitcoin. “In order to get extra coins, investors buy more BTC and exchange altcoins to BTC, causing enormous demand,” he said.

The second-biggest cryptocurrency after Bitcoin is Ether, also known as Ethereum after the project behind it. Ether is currently trading at around $297 and has a market capitalization of almost $30 billion.

There are more than 1,000 digital currencies with a combined current market capitalization of $200 billion. However, with Bitcoin’s rise, some less popular cryptocurrencies have reached lows that had not been experienced for several months.

The latest record market cap value has influenced many Bitcoin supporters. Evangelist, Trace Mayer, described the currency as a unique wealth transfer during a lecture at LaGuardia Community College this week. “This vortex that’s just going to suck in so much of the world’s capital… it’s going to be a wealth transfer the likes of which humanity has never seen and probably won’t ever see again for a long, long time,” he said.