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Bitcoin (BTC) surges past $19K as cryptocurrency’s market cap surpasses JPMorgan

Bitcoin's market capitalization soared to $354 billion, surpassing JPMorgan's $349 billion.

Image by pattymalajak from Pixabay

Tue, 24 Nov 2020, 15:18 pm UTC

Bitcoin (BTC) has continued its upward trend and finally breached the $19,000 mark. With the increase in the cryptocurrency’s price, the token’s market capitalization even managed to surpass one of Wall Steet’s biggest financial institutions.

Bitcoin’s rally continued and the token finally broke through $19,000 on November 24, 2020. This is the first time that BTC was able to do so since December 2017, Cointelegraph reported.

The cryptocurrency managed to hold its momentum and is currently trading at $19,135 as of press time. With its rally, Bitcoin’s market capitalization surged to a new all-time high since 2017. Based on data from Coinmarketcap.com, BTC is now valued at $354 billion.

With the rise of the crypto’s price, its market capitalization even surpassed JPMorgan, one of Wall Street’s largest financial firms. JPMorgan’s market cap is estimated at $349 billion as of November 23 based on data from Macro Trends.

The bank’s CEO Jamie Dimon is a known Bitcoin critic and called the cryptocurrency a “fraud” and a “scam” in 2017. Despite Dimon’s skepticism, JP Morgan surprisingly told investors in October 2020 that “the potential long-term upside for Bitcoin is considerable” and even suggested that its price could double or triple in the long term.

There have been a number of reasons given for BTC’s recent rise. One reason is that the trading “volume of both institutional and spot exchanges has been increasing rapidly since September,” according to Cointelegraph. This suggests increased interest in the cryptocurrency, which drove up its price.

In fact, cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase recently revealed that its crypto assets under custody have more than tripled in just seven months. From $6 billion in April, the value of crypto assets it holds has ballooned to $20 billion.

“I joined in April this year, at that time our assets, institutional assets under custody were $6 billion, today we stand at over $20 billion, so more than a three-time increase,” Coinbase’s Head of Institutional Coverage Brett Tejpaul said. He added that institutional investors brought in $14 billion in new funds during the seven-month period.

Another reason is that supply just can’t meet the current demand. “Every time spot exchanges add to their $BTC reserves it gets depleted almost immediately," a crypto trader known as “Byzantine General” said. “Don't you get it? There's literally not enough supply.”

Again, institutional investors greatly contributed to the supply imbalance. It was recently that PayPal recently went on a buying spree and bought up to 70 percent of newly mined Bitcoin last month. PayPal and Square’s Cash App, which also recently went on a BTC buying spree, bought more than 100 percent of newly mined tokens.

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