Last month, Bitcoin (BTC) made history yet again after smashing through its previous all-time high, surpassing both Visa and Mastercard in market cap, making the leading crypto asset bigger than two of the most established financial institutions in the world.
Market capitalization – or market cap for short – refers to the total dollar market value of a company’s outstanding share of stocks, calculated by multiplying the total number of outstanding shares by the current market price of one individual share. With a market cap of approximately $462 billion, roughly $2 billion higher than that of Visa, and over $120 billion larger than the Mastercard market cap, BTC has exceeded some of the largest companies by market capitalization size.
Bitcoin Rising
In March of 2020, BTC couldn’t seem to find its footing – the asset’s price fell below $6000, making its bullish trajectory since then easy to appreciate. Many cryptocurrency skeptics saw this price instability as confirmation of their bias, but with BTC’s soaring price in recent weeks, even the most hardcore crypto-enthusiasts found themselves in awe.
Micheal Saylor, the CEO of Microstrategy, has risen to prominence as a large proponent of the cryptocurrency and has insisted that the coin still has room to grow, despite its exponential growth. Although the asset is still miles away from surpassing the next company ahead in terms of market cap – Berkshire Hathaway – if BTC continues its rise to prominence, it should do a lot more in the coming years.
Surpassing Berkshire Hathaway
With a market cap of over $500 billion, BTC needs at least another $70 billion to match the companies market value.
Warren Buffet, famous value investor and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, is a renowned billionaire known for making negative comments towards Bitcoin in the past. His most recent comments dismissed crypto-trading as just “dementia.” However, if BTC can manage to sell for over $28,000 in the coming days, the cryptocurrency would surpass the industrial giant in terms of value.
The Bullish Case for Bitcoin
With the world still in the throes of a global pandemic, BTC gave the crypto-community the best Christmas present they could have asked for with a new all-time high of just under $25,000 on Christmas day. Many commented on the similarities to three years ago, in December 2017, when BTC reached its first massive all-time high of slightly under $20,000.
However, an increasing sentiment amongst crypto-enthusiasts is that this rally is indeed different. From so-called experts, all the way down to casual crypto holders, this sentiment is spurred by the recent price appreciation based on interest from large financial institutions and not just fear-of-missing-out (FOMO) from retail investors. As Bitcoin continues reaching new all-time highs, the anticipation of an upcoming alt-coin bull run has been building amongst the crypto-community.
