2024 has been a great year for Bitcoin (BTC), doubling its 15-year capitalization and adding hundreds of billions of dollars. Following the institutional investors’ leadership, retail is back to Bitcoin as BTC surpasses the $100,000 psychological price resistance.
Bitcoin is currently with a $2 trillion market cap after briefly touching the $2.06 trillion mark. Interestingly, $1.135 trillion was added in 2024 alone since January 1, when BTC had a $865.07 billion capitalization.
This market cap is calculated by multiplying Bitcoin’s current circulating supply of nearly 19.80 million BTC by its unitary price of $100,500. Things, however, can get more significant when looking to more precise metrics such as the realized cap, according to analysts.
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Bitcoin realized cap nearly doubled in 2024 alone
In particular, onchain analyst Ki Young Ju, founder and CEO of CryptoQuant, believes that realized cap is a better metric. According to him, the market cap “doesn’t fully capture actual capital inflows as not all transactions occur on exchanges.”
“On-chain data provides a more comprehensive perspective,” Ki Young Ju said in a recent post on December 12. “With metrics like realized market cap offering a more accurate measure of inflows by tracking real-time Bitcoin transactions.”
Essentially, the realized cap multiplies Bitcoin’s supply by BTC price when an address (UTXO) moves it for the last time. When the realized cap is lower than the market cap, it means that Bitcoin holders are in aggregated profit. Meanwhile, a higher realized cap than the current market cap indicates an aggregated loss for the network participants.
In another post on X, the onchain analyst highlighted that Bitcoin added $80 billion in realized cap monthly during 2024. “This year alone, $339 billion worth of Bitcoin has been purchased, according to the realized cap,” Ki Young Ju detailed.
“I remember we’re talking the numbers like $100 million in 2017, $1 billion in 2021,” he concluded. “Now it’s $100 billion. We would be talking $1 trillion in the next few years.”
If the capital inflow to Bitcoin continues in this rhythm, investors could see even more significant price appreciation and adoption moving forward into 2025.
However, it is important to understand that the more participants in profit, the more likely they are to sell at one point, seeking to realize this profit against the current market cap. A significant selling pressure could cause a capital outflow and negatively affect the BTC price.
Looking into 2025 price predictions, prominent Wall Street analysts like Tom Lee believe Bitcoin could reach $250,000 by year-end. Similarly, the $870 billion baking giant Standard Chartered forecasts a BTC price of $200,000 next year.
Featured image from Shutterstock.
