CRYPTO MARKET CAP HITS ALL-TIME HIGH

After a crash in May, the total market cap valuation of cryptos has recovered, with 250 billion dollars to spare.
Crypto investments now represent a 3 trillion dollar market. That’s a 280-percent increase from where the valuation stood on 1 January 2021, at 775 billion. It also means cryptos have more than overcome a May crash that saw the market in the doldrums through most of summer.
News in June that China was banning bitcoin mining, and other rumblings seemed to spell rough waters.
But crypto innovation in DeFi and NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens), which fueled banking, gaming and asset tokenization use cases, have proved that the cryptoization of many traditional sectors has likely only just begun.
Obviously, the story goes well beyond bitcoin. Ethereum, the top market cap altcoin, has seen a blistering rise overall in 2021, especially following protocol upgrades. Binance Coin (BNB) and Solana, the 3rd and 4th altcoins, currently, have done even better.
This has been the year that the traditional world of finance,and governments around the world definitely woke up to the fact that blockchains and related DLTs (Distributed Ledger Technologies) are generationally transformative technologies.
The Latest example? Mastercard announced Monday that it’s introducing crypto-funded payment cards in the Asian-Pacific region.
Cardholders will be able to rapidly change their cryptocurrencies into conventional fiat cash that can be spent everywhere Mastercard is accepted throughout the globe, both online and offline, rather than directly sending cryptocurrencies to a retailer.
According to Mastercard’s own study, 45 percent of individuals in the Asia-Pacific area are contemplating utilizing cryptocurrencies in the next year.
The overall growth of cryptos in 2021 has marked a watershed, perhaps most importantly in terms of user investment and adoption. 
Crypto investor and analyst Raoul Pal noted this week that even though those numbers have nearly tripled this year, it may be a drop in the bucket compared to what’s to come. He said by 2024, there could be a billion crypto users. And by 2030, there could be over four billion.
And the future market cap of the crypto sector market might be in line with sectors like real estate and the stock market, whose valuations currently sit at around $200 trillion.
The Trends Journal has been ahead of 2021 crypto trends. We noted back in early February that crypto users were likely to exponentially increase (see “CRYPTO SANITY,” 16 Feb 2021).
Long before that, we noted that the propensity of a younger generation to be open to crypto adoption was an important signal (see “Cryptos: Millennial gold,” 4 Oct 2017).
Our recent article “CRYPTO OPENING WEALTH TO YOUNGER GENERATION” (2 Nov 2021) detailed just how important that trend has proven.
In “Blockchain Battles” and now our expanded “Trends In Cryptos” section, we have been alerting readers to the power of the blockchain revolution in many articles. Some touchstones include:

• “ELON MUSK: TECH OUTSIDER?” (9 Feb 2021)
• “BEHIND THE DIGITAL CURRENCY BULL RUN” (23 Mar 2021)
• “WHAT IS THE VALUE OF CRYPTOS AND BLOCKCHAINS?” (15 Jun 2021)
• “‘THE CRYPTO-ING’: FINANCIALS PICKING UP PACE TO CRYPTOS” (24 Aug 2021)