On February 5, 2021, when Bitcoin was approaching $37,800 and Ethereum was at $1,724, it was $1.15 trillion. Cut to May 3, 2021: Bitcoin is up 53% to $58,000, Ethereum is up 83.8 percent to $3,170, and the total market capitalization of all cryptos has now doubled. According to CoinMarketCap numbers, the total market cap of 9,541 coins briefly surpassed $2.3 trillion on Monday, as investors' enthusiasm for Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies grew. However, at the time of filing this paper, the overall market capitalization had fallen to $2.28 trillion.
Investment banks like Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan have begun to sell bitcoin funds to their high-net-worth customers. One of the main drivers of the crypto ecosystem's development has been institutional interest. Furthermore, last month's direct listing of crypto exchange Coinbase was a landmark moment in the global crypto ecosystem's brief background.
This also signalled a shift in the mainstream acceptance of cryptocurrencies. The achievement will also enable crypto proponents to press for the widespread adoption of digital assets. DeFi is a decentralised finance initiative that includes decentralised lending and investing, decentralised markets, yield farming protocols, and decentralised insurance, among other things. NFTs, on the other hand, are tokenized artworks or exclusive memes provided via a smart contract-supported digital auction medium.
A digital painting by artist Beeple, for example, was sold for $69 million via an NFT marketplace offering in March. However, the majority of fund managers still see Bitcoin as a speculative bubble. According to Bank of America's April 2021 Global Fund Manager Survey of about 200 institutional, mutual, and hedge fund managers around the world, 74% respondents believed Bitcoin to be a bubble while only 16 per cent disagreed with the notion.