The price of bitcoin crossed another major milestone on Friday, as the cryptocurrency's market value surpassed $1 trillion, according to Coindesk.
The digital currency was trading at just under $54,000 per coin on Friday as it hit the new level, up more than 3% in the last 24 hours. The price of bitcoin has now gained about 350% over the past six months. Prior to the recent surge, the digital asset has never traded above $20,000.
The move has been fueled in part by increased adoption of the cryptocurrency by major investors and companies. The oldest bank in the United States, the Bank of New York Mellon, announced earlier this month that it was moving into the space. Elon Musk's Tesla converted some of its balance sheet cash into bitcoin earlier this year and said it would start accepting the digital tokens as payment.
Market cap is calculated by multiplying the price of bitcoin by the number created. While not a perfect comparison, the $1 trillion market cap would make bitcoin's value greater than all but a handful of the world's stocks. Tesla, for instance, has a market cap of around $700 billion, while Apple is valued at more than $2 trillion.
To be sure, not everyone on Wall Street has been convinced of bitcoin's future prospects. Citadel Securities founder Ken Griffin said Friday that he was not interested in cryptocurrency, while researchers at JPMorgan have said bitcoin's rally is unsustainable.
Source: cnbc.com