Bitcoin Breaks Past $71,000 For First Time Ever, Overtaking Silver’s Market Cap

Bitcoin has registered a significant milestone, eclipsing the market capitalization of silver as it topped $71,000 for the first time ever. 

The world’s largest and oldest crypto has been on a steady uptrend since the landmark approval of the spot BTC exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in the US. BTC jumped past the $70,000 threshold for the first time in history on March 8. The Bitcoin price hit a high above $70K then, followed by a swift correction to the mid-$68,000 zone. Days later, BTC has burst above $71K, logging a fresh all-time high.

Bitcoin Breaches $71,000

Bitcoin was trading for $71,733 at press time, a 2.9% jump over the last 24 hours. According to CoinGecko data, the alpha crypto has gained roughly 10.4% over the past week and 53.1% during the last month.

Following the new record high, Bitcoin has become the eighth-largest asset in the world after its market capitalization surpassed the $1.383 trillion market cap of silver, the second-biggest precious metal in the world.

Bitcoin boasts a market value of $1.409 trillion, trailing behind Microsoft, Apple, Nvidia, Saudi Aramco, Amazon, and Google parent company Alphabet. Gold has long held the top spot with its $14.685 trillion market cap.

The bullish BTC rally comes on the back of a very successful week for spot ETFs. As per data from BitMEX Research, these products witnessed more than $2.2 billion in inflows last week. As of last Friday, BlackRock’s IBIT spot ETF had amassed approximately $13.6 billion in assets under management.

Since their debut, the ETFs have absorbed 4.06% of the current Bitcoin supply, as observed by Dune. At this rate, ETFs are projected to suck up 8.65% of the BTC supply annually.

Another factor boosting the price of Bitcoin is the approaching halving event, in which the amount of BTC given as a reward to Bitcoin miners for processing new blocks on the network will be slashed in half. This April halving will see the reward lowered to 2.125 BTC from 6.25 BTC, subsequently reducing the amount of Bitcoin issued every day by circa 900 BTC, worth roughly $73 million.

Meanwhile, other major cryptos, including ether (ETH), have also seen substantial gains, with the second-largest jumping above the $4,000 milestone. Ether has some bullish news of its own as a catalyst this week. In just two days, the Dencun upgrade will go live. Dencun is expected to dramatically enhance network scalability and reduce transaction fees for Layer 2 blockchains.