Ethereum Is Now Bigger Than Visa
Popular cryptocurrency, Ethereum, passes $500 billion market cap
As of Wednesday, Ethereum (ETH), once considered strictly as an altcoin, has hit a record-high market capitalization of a half-trillion dollars. This places the popular cryptocurrency above Visa, a multinational financial services corporation with a market cap of about $490 billion.
Over the past year alone, ETH is up 2,120%, following a trend of immense gains for cryptos other than Bitcoin (BTC), which has struggled to maintain market dominance. As of now, Ethereum is the second-most valuable digital currency following Bitcoin.
Many analysts and Reddit users alike refer to Ethereum’s unshakeable growth as the “Ethereum tsunami” to analogize the immense swell of its market value.
Retail investors are not the only force behind the ETH craze. Yesterday, Finance Magnates reported an increase in “whale activity” taking place over the past few weeks. Apparently, 46,793 ETH was transferred from a digital wallet to Binance, a popular crypto trading platform. The total value of the transaction was estimated at $180 million.
For those who are new, “whale” refers to buyers with massive amounts of capital, typically professional investors or institutions, as opposed to a retail investor or non-professional individual who purchases stock or crypto.
Dogecoin (DOGE), another cryptocurrency that remains controversial due to its popularization from a meme, and Tesla owner, Elon Musk, followed a vaguely similar pattern of fast-paced growth. Now, the successes of altcoins have triggered a chain reaction of finding the next “moonshot” crypto.
On the social media website Reddit, one can find the subreddit r/CryptoMoonShots, a constant feed of stylistically homogenized posts about new cryptos with speculatively high earnings potential.
Some of these new coins appear to have humorous or attention-grabbing names, following Dogecoin’s methodology of capitalizing on popular culture.
Ethereum is different from these other coins because ETH is listed on major crypto trading platforms like Binance, Coinbase, and even Robinhood’s relatively new crypto trading service.
Additionally, more vendors will accept ETH as payment for goods or services contrary to DOGE, which has minimal purchase use. Unless you’d like to purchase a seat in Elon Musk’s SpaceX program, Musk announced his space program would accept the meme coin as payment. It’s unclear how much of a stake Musk has in DOGE — if any.
As Ethereum surges in value, the latest debate is whether ETH is still considered an altcoin. Altcoin typically refers to any crypto that isn’t crypto powerhouse Bitcoin. However, that definition may be changing very soon as ETH surpasses even JPMorgan Chase, valued at around $480 billion.
