At $125 Billion, Bitcoin Breaks Record for "Realized" Market Cap

Bitcoin reached an all-time high of $125 billion in realized market capitalization, an increase of $10 billion in a month, according to data from metrics site Glassnode. This comes as Bitcoin yesterday hit $15,903, its highest price since the tail-end of the 2017 Bitcoin bubble.

Realized market cap is a measure first conceived by data analytics firm Coin Metrics. It attempts to calculate how big the active market cap for Bitcoin is, since, reasons Coin Metrics, there’s no point in taking into account a massive amount of Bitcoin that hasn't changed hands for a long time.

To calculate ‘realized capitalization’, Coin Metrics assigns time-sensitive values to each coin; for example, if a coin last moved in 2018 when the price was $6,000, then to give an accurate picture, that coin would need to be priced at $6,000 rather than today’s price.

That’s an adjustment to the standard measurement of actual market cap, which is the multiplication of all the coins in circulation multiplied by total price. Unlike the actual market cap, realized market cap is (in theory) not as vulnerable to sudden price changes. Movements from old coins won’t massively shift the market cap.

The record is the latest benchmark of Bitcoin’s recent success. Bitcoin yesterday hit highs of $15,903, an increase of 15% from last week’s $13,800. Why? Perhaps in anticipation of the US elections, a rise in Tether’s market cap, or something else entirely. 

But over the last 24 hours, it has dipped by 3.54% in price; its current price is $15,359.