Despite being labelled a “limited supply of nothing” by billionaire hedge fund manager John Paulson, bitcoin topped $US50,000 overnight. The volatile digital coin has retreated to $US49,603 as at 9am AEST.
The bigger picture is the surging value of smaller coins, which takes the total value of all cryptocurrencies to $US2.24 trillion ($A3.03 trillion), according to CoinMarketCap.
Bitcoin’s $US988 billion market value still represents around 42 per cent of crypto’s total market cap. The second-largest is ethereum at $US445.2 billion, which is around 19 per cent of crypto’s total market cap.
Others like Cardano, Ripple, and Dogecoin have also climbed sharply over the last month.