Yahoo Finance’s Zack Guzman joined Yahoo Finance Live to discuss the crypto market topping $2T in value for the first time and what it signals for the sector.
Video Transcript
SEANA SMITH: The crypto craze continues. The cryptocurrency market topping $2 trillion for the first time. Ethereum ether hitting a record high. Zack Guzman closely watching this big milestone for us. And Zack, I guess, what’s the big driver behind this move above $2 trillion? Because we’ve been talking about how the crypto market has been hot now for quite some time.
ZACK GUZMAN: Yeah, we have. And a lot of the focus whenever we have that discussion, Seana, is mostly– and probably rightfully so– on Bitcoin, seeing as it is the largest cryptocurrency out there. Market cap north of $1 trillion. But to your point, the exciting thing is the other piece of the market, ether, all the other cryptocurrencies we talk less about, those are really starting to take off. And it really started last year. Ether up 1,100% relative to Bitcoin’s 700% gains over that same time period.
But as of late, Ether the one who hit a fresher all-time high, and the rest of those alt coins, as they’re called, they’re really the ones driving that. We just showed the chart real quick of Bitcoin’s dominance, a measure of how much Bitcoin’s market cap makes up the entire now $2 trillion entire cryptocurrency market cap. And you can see that that’s come down. It’s only about 56.3%. That’s the lowest level we’ve seen since June of 2019.
And the real reason is because ever since Bitcoin got off to a hot start here in 2021, we’ve recently seen alt coins, some of the ones that we’ve never talked about, to be honest, on Yahoo Finance, mainly Binance coin, the coin behind one of those large cryptocurrency exchanges, building out the ability for some programmers out there to build on that chain, as well as some interesting projects in the DeFi space, really starting to catch fire.
And it comes at an interesting time, guys. Because we’re talking about Coinbase going public via direct listing later on in the month. And some of these other projects are basically doing what Coinbase is doing, but decentralized versions of that, too. So, all very interesting things in the crypto space as some enthusiasm moves beyond just Bitcoin.
SEANA SMITH: Certainly lots coming up and lots to talk to you about then over the next couple of months. All right, Zack Guzman, thanks so much.