A 48% increase in the price of Bitcoin since the beginning of the year has sent Bitcoin’s market cap past that of Visa, a major global payment processing firm, once again. With Bitcoin currently priced at $24,365, it holds a market cap of $470.16 billion USD. This is marginally higher than that of Visa, with a market cap of $469.87 billion USD, according to data coming from CoinMarketCap.
This is only the third time that Bitcoin’s market cap has exceeded that of Visa. The first instance was in December 2020, when the price of Bitcoin reached $25K for the very first time. This price level was reached during a surge that witnessed Bitcoin rally from a low price of $10,200 in September of 2020 to $63,170 in April of 2021.
Visa managed to reclaim and hold the lead between June 2022 and October 2022, Bitcoin managed to surpass Visa briefly on October 1st before the payment processing company captured the lead once again. This lead increased when the FTX cryptocurrency exchange collapsed and shook up the crypto market, shaving off more than $100 billion from Bitcoin’s market cap in the four days between November 6th and 10th, 2022.
Since that time, Bitcoin has managed to make a full recovery and has added a further $65 billion, reaching the $408 billion needed to overtake Visa. It is worth noting that with such a small difference between the two, the pair are flipping lead positions almost hourly.
As for Bitcoin’s remarkable start to the new year, its latest “flippening” of Visa occurred following a period of 14 consecutive daily price increases during the period of January 4th to the 17th. Bitcoin’s market cap is well ahead of that of Mastercard, the world’s second-largest payment processor, which holds a current market cap of $345.24 billion.
The price of Bitcoin remains down 63% from its record high of $69,044 reached in November of 2021.