#BinanceAlphaAlert Crypto Market Reached Record High of $3.91 Trillion in 2024, According to Binance Research

The crypto market surged to record levels in 2024, driven by institutional adoption, resulting in a new all-time high for bitcoin.

Historic Market Cap for Cryptocurrencies

The cryptocurrency market reached a significant market cap of $3.91 trillion in December 2024. Bitcoin‘s recent all-time high of $108,364, institutional acceptance through key BTC acquisitions, and increasing regulatory clarity were the main drivers of this.

This is according to Binance Research’s January 2025 market insights report. In late December, the U.S. Federal Reserve reduced its scheduled 2025 rate cuts from four to two, causing a strong market correction that erased nearly $0.5 trillion from the cryptocurrency market’s value.

Bitcoin ended the year with over a 120% year-to-date market cap gain, following an incredible year with several all-time highs. This caused the number one crypto to surpass silver and Saudi Aramco to become the seventh-largest asset globally by market cap.

Bitcoin ended 2024 as one of the year’s highest performers among the top 10 global assets with a broader market recovery coinciding with bitcoin’s halving, the introduction of spot ETFs, and changes in monetary policy.

USDT and USDC maintained their dominance in the stablecoin market. However, Ethena‘s USDe quickly grew to over $5.9 billion, overtaking DAI as the third-largest stablecoin. Volumes of decentralized spot and perpetuals also hit record highs of $326 billion and $356 billion, respectively. Lending and liquid staking processes also reached new total-value locked (TVL) highs of $71 billion and $55 billion with the decentralized finance industry looking well-positioned for more expansion in 2025.

Artificial intelligence (AI) agents gained popularity and become a more noticeable aspect of the cryptocurrency industry. The leading tokens for AI agents are now valued at billions of dollars and receive approximately 100,000 impressions every day. The AI category is led by ai16z.