Originally written May 29th, 2022:
A quick glance at any major outlet in the financial press shows a significant focus on the crypto market. Many websites now feature a Crypto category in their banner menus at top of page, allocating well-deserved pixels to a developing asset class.
However, crypto is still a fairly small patch of territory in the broader financial markets when measured in total USD terms. In this analysis, we compare the size of the cryptocurrency market (around $1.2 trillion) against other more mature asset classes in the United States: corporate credit, public equities, and U.S. treasuries. There are many others not shown here.
Global crypto is now around the same size as the U.S. leveraged loan market. At its peak size of $2.9 trillion last November, crypto was still smaller than the U.S. municipal bond market, and nowhere near the scale of the public equities market (most of which is comprised of the big-cap S&P 500 names).
Bitcoin and Ethereum dominate the crypto market as well, with nearly two-thirds of the global market cap combined.
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