Bitcoin boom continues; crypto market cap exceeds $50B CAD


avatar Quebex Fintech Inc.
May 05, 2017

Bitcoin’s meteoric rise continues with prices now sitting comfortably at over $2,000 CAD per coin. The value of a single bitcoin is currently $2,154.84 as of 11am ET, Friday.

The coin’s recent success has propelled the total market cap for all cryptocurrencies to over $50 billion, making it increasingly difficult for banking institutions and governments to dismiss the virtual currency market as a volatile fad.

Much of the coin’s recent gains can be ascribed to the Japanese government’s decision, on April 1st, to declare the currency a legal form of payment. Indeed, according to Cryptocompare – a data website that analyses bitcoin trading across many exchanges globally – roughly half of all trading over the last few days has taken place between the bitcoin/Japanese yen currency pair.



Another coin which has experienced unprecedented gains this week is Litecoin; the value of a single litecoin has shot up by 52.51% to $35 a coin. This was, in part, due to popular exchange Coinbase adding support for the currency on May 3rd, along with Litecoin developers’ recent decision to implement scaling solution SegWit, which Bitcoin is likely to also adopt.

Bitcoin and Litecoin can be traded directly via dozens of crypto exchanges and many experts are referring to Litecoin as, potentially, the silver to Bitcoin’s gold.