Bitcoin rally pushes it above world’s three largest banks

According to data presented by Justinas Baltrusaitis of learnbonds.com, Bitcoin’s market capitalisation at US$421 billion now outranks all the world’s biggest banks.

Quoting data from the analytical site, bankr.nl, Baltrusaitis makes a comparison of Bitcoin to the ten largest banks, showing that after its recent rally, Bitcoin is now bigger than even the United States’ three largest banks.

“Making this top position in the market cap compared to banks is significant for Bitcoin. It illustrates that Bitcoin is still just as big as a stock rather than it rising to an asset class of its own. Interestingly, Bitcoin has now evolved to perform some banking services, like lending and borrowing. The asset is also used in processing payments and facilitating financial services like international trade,” commented Baltrusaitis.

The world’s biggest bank, JP Morgan with a market cap of around US$368 billion, still trails Bitcoin by US$50 billion.

Citing reason’s for Bitcoin’s meteoric rise since March this year, he wrote “Investments made in Bitcoin by major companies like MicroStrategy and Stone Ridge, public support for crypto from prominent financial experts, the recent Bitcoin halving, and other factors have also given Bitcoin’s price a major boost over the past few months. As the benchmark cryptocurrency, Bitcoin has gotten to a place where institutional investors and banks are legitimately looking at investing in the sector as a defence against currency devaluation.”

This week Thursday, 17 December 2020, Bitcoin briefly crossed the US$23,000 mark. This year’s move echoed its 2017 rally when Bitcoin went from below US$1000 to US$20,000.

Earlier this year, the crypto currency went below US$4000 as a result of the initial impact of Covid-19 but started making a remarkable comeback when a broad spectrum of institutional investors opted for crypto to avoid conventional currency fluctuations.