Things tend to move quickly in the world of cryptocurrencies and the past few weeks have definitely proves this to be true. A number of coins have broken past old barriers on the way to recording new all-time high prices, while Bitcoin edges over the magical $10,000 mark.

A Major Milestone

While a total valuation of $315 billion may not compare so well when matched up against some of the more traditional companies and financial markets, it represents a major move for the cryptocurrency community as a whole compared to the beginning of 2017. The growth the sector has recorded over the course of 2017 has been spectacular; on January 1, the total market cap sat at approximately $17B and managed to break the $100B mark in the first week of June. It then only took until November 5 for the total market cap to reach $200B.

Over the past 12 months, the cryptocurrency market has also grown rapidly in terms of trading volumes. On January 1, the sector experienced a 24-hour trading volume of around $122M; this grew consistently over the year before finally averaging figures of over $1B in May. Despite now averaging 24-hour trading volumes well into the billions, the market actually experienced a record figure of over $41B in August.

The market currently contains over 1300 different currencies, though much of the activity is still very much dominated by Bitcoin and Ethereum. Bitcoin accounts for over half of the total market cap with a valuation of just over $170B; Ethereum sits in second place, with a total valuation of just over $46B. The year of 2017 also saw the advent of a number of Bitcoin derivatives, which has helped inflate the total market cap. Bitcoin Cash sits in third place with a valuation of just over $26B, while Bitcoin Gold, a rather new entrant to the market, is already valued at over 5.5B. Ripple makes completes the top five coins and actually sits in fourth place with a total market cap of over $11B.

Rapid Growth

Over the year, a number of coins in the market have experienced periods of rapid growth and on May 1, Bitcoin had a total market cap of just $22B. It took BTC until November to be consistently classified as having a market cap in excess of $100B. Ethereum began the year with a market cap of around $720M, and after a spike in June which saw ETH valued at over $36B, the currency experienced a period of fluctuation before reaching a number of all time high valuations in November.

This proved to be a similar story for a number of the market’s major currencies as Dash, Litecoin, and Monero all experienced significant increases in valuation. It can be assumed that a total market cap of over $500 billion must only be months away, and when the market reaches a figure of $1 trillion, it will start to rival some of the more traditional financial markets.