Total crypto market value breaks $1.9T for first time since May

The cryptocurrency market has continued a solid bullish trend in early August, with the total market capitalization nearing $2 trillion.

According to data from crypto data aggregator CoinGecko, the total crypto market cap broke the $1.9 trillion mark on Aug. 9, retouching this level for the first time since May 18.

Starting July 19, cryptocurrency markets recorded a notable rise, with market value surging nearly $700 billion. The market is still down roughly $700 billion from the all-time high of $2.5 trillion recorded on May 11.

In line with the strong recovery trend, major cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) have retested their mid-May levels in terms of market capitalization.

Bitcoin’s market value hit above $860 billion on Monday, surging this high for the first time since May 16, according to CoinGecko. After breaking into a $1 trillion asset earlier this year, Bitcoin experienced a major sell-off, with its market cap dropping to $560 billion as of July 20. As the Bitcoin price surged back above $45,000, BTC market value has increased by over 53%.

Ether, the second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, has posted more gains since the bear market in July, surging nearly 81% from $204 billion on July 20 to $369 billion on Monday. The cryptocurrency underwent a major network upgrade on Aug. 5, with ETH price rallying 50% following the London hard fork amid investor expectations for the upgrade to solve issues like high transaction fees.

Related: Stablecoin market to have hit $1T by 2025, Unstoppable Domains CEO predicts

Amid a renewed bull crypto market, some major cryptocurrencies have experienced a ranking reshuffle in terms of market capitalization. Binance USD (BUSD), the third-largest stablecoin by market value after Tether (USDT) and USD Coin (USDC), dropped out of the top-10 most-valued cryptocurrencies list on Aug. 5, flipped by Uniswap’s governance token UNI. At the time of writing, BUSD is the 11th largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization of $12 billion.

As previously reported, the latest growth on crypto markets came after Tesla CEO Elon Musk disclosed that his aerospace firm SpaceX owns Bitcoin on July 22. The CEO also said that Tesla was planning to resume crypto payments for car purchases due to a significant drop in the percentage of non-renewable energy used for Bitcoin mining. Musk's previous decision to stop BTC payments at Tesla — due to the currency's high energy consumption — was seen as a major cause for Bitcoin’s price crash in May.