ETH is now larger than some of Wall Street’s biggest players, including Wells Fargo and Morgan Stanley, as well as payments giant American Express.
Ethereum the Giant
Ethereum’s (ETH) market capitalization reached $200 billion yesterday, for the first time in its history.
The giant valuation comes after the industry’s second cryptocurrency soared to a new all-time high of $1752.05, according to CoinGecko data.
This makes Ethereum, a decentralized ecosystem with no central authority or strategy, more valuable than some of the largest companies on Wall Street in terms of market capitalization.
Banking giant Wells Fargo, for example, has a total market capitalization of $134.5 billion according to the latest data. Competitor Morgan Stanley is not far behind with $103.4 billion.
Payments global processing giant American Express sits just under the twelve zeros mark with a valuation of $93.5 billion.
Market capitalization measures the total value of all a platform’s tokens (or a business’s shares) in existence at the current market price.
Crypto Takes on Wall Street
It goes without saying that the cryptocurrency market is coming into its own. In fact, after recently passing the $1 trillion mark, several projects are reporting new all-time highs on a daily basis.
On Saturday, Binance Coin (BNB) soared over 25% to set an all-time high of $75.50. As a result, BNB became the seventh-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, ahead of legacy crypto Litecoin (LTC).
BNB’s market capitalization currently sits at $10.5 billion. Moreover, the total market capitalization of the entire market is now over $1.23 trillion.
Valuation is not the only way cryptocurrencies are taking on Wall Street. For example, a group of Redditors took to the internet forum last month to support video-games distributor GameStop’s (GME) stock.
The resulting rally left many Wall Street firms that had bet against GME licking their wounds as its value soared and caused shorts to be liquidated.
A New Generation of Institution
However, not all large institutions are in danger. Companies like Grayscale Investments and MicroStrategy continue to scoop up Bitcoin (BTC), despite its all-time high.
Both companies now collectively own billions of dollars worth of cryptocurrencies as a result.
Moreover, a number of payment processing giants, such as Visa and PayPal, are making big moves in encouraging cryptocurrency adoption. Even the Federal Reserve has started its own payments processing project, FedNow, which invited a number of blockchain companies to participate.
The time of the cryptocurrency and blockchain industry being a niche endeavor is over. Higher valuations are likely to come.
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