The cryptocurrency market has added a new jewel to its crown as the overall market capitalization of all cryptocurrencies crosses the half trillion dollars benchmark. This year of 2017 has proved to be the best year so far for the entire crypto community. In addition to Bitcoins historic rise, we have several other altcoins rallying this year contributing significantly to take the market to new highs.

Having achieved this new benchmark, the additional figures provided by CoinMarketCap show that the overall market cap of cryptocurrencies has climbed by more than 2500% year-to-date (YTD). Another interesting fact is that as on date there are 22 cryptocurrencies in the market who individually contribute over $1 billion in market cap. This proves the fact that are still few good altcoins which remain as a preferred choice for the buyers.

The latest surge above $500 billion which took place in the last 24 hours has been majorly contributed to the significant rise in the price of Ethereum and Litecoin. The price of Ethereum has surged past $600 with its market cap now above $62 billion. Ethereum has hit a new all-time high of $662, and according to CoinMarketCap, it is currently trading at $648.05.

On the other hand, Litecoin has made a significant rally in the past one week with its price increasing by over 200% during this time. Litecoin is currently comfortably trading above $300 and its market cap has surged past $16 billion. An interesting statistics show that Litecoin has gained by over 7000% in the past one year which means that it has grown investor’s money by more than three times than what Bitcoin has done.

With the tremendous surge in the buying interest for Ethereum and Litecoin, Coinbase had to halt its operations yesterday for some period of time due to massive trading volumes. Over the past two months, there have been positive signs of investor’s growing interest and participation in the crypto markets. Coinbase data shows that since the start of 2017 the number of registered users on its exchange has grown by a 100% and now stands above 13.3 million users overall.

The major growth in investor-participation was seen recently after the announcement of bitcoin futures contract by the CME Group in the last week of October. Soon after that, the markets flooded with huge investor orders as the price of Bitcoin was seen surging by 100% in just past 45 days. Interestingly, the cryptocurrency market cap also grew by 150% during the same period. Following the CME Group’s announcement many other institutional players started buying Bitcoin and are coming with their Bitcoin-investment-products and services in the next year 2018.

Today is the fourth day of the Bitcoin futures contract going live on the CBOE exchange which surged past over $18,300 just in 48 hours from the launch time where it started at $13000. The buying interest among investors continue to grow and analysts predict that Bitcoin price can climb above $20,000 in the near time, soon. At the press time, Bitcoin is trading at $17,048.91, according to CoinMarketCap.

Amidst all the growing interest in cryptocurrencies, there are still few renowned personalities who believe that there is a bubble in the market and have asked new investors to approach cautiously.

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