2024 will be a historic year for the cryptocurrency industry, especially Bitcoin. After starting the year with the approval of spot exchange-traded funds (ETFs), it didn't take long for the premium cryptocurrency to hit new all-time highs on the back of new institutional capital.
This has been almost all the talk about Bitcoin over the past 12 months, as the market leader has received the most attention from institutional investors and large corporations. Blockchain analysis firm CryptoQuant recently published a report highlighting the influence of large investors in the world's largest cryptocurrencies this year.
Will 2024 be the best year for institutional adoption of Bitcoin?
In its latest weekly report, blockchain intelligence platform CryptoQuant discussed We explain how 2024 has been a defining year for institutional adoption of Bitcoin, spurred by the launch of spot ETFs in January. By the end of the year, the BTC Fund already held more coins (over 1.1 million) than any other entity (including Bitcoin's anonymous founder Satoshi Nakamoto).
ETFs have offered both institutional and retail investors a way to gain exposure to Bitcoin without directly owning it. At the same time, spot exchange-traded funds have helped drive steady inflows into flagship cryptocurrencies over the past 11 months.
According to CryptoQuant data, BTC witnessed an impressive increase in realized market capitalization, rising from $430 billion to an all-time high of $730 billion by 2024. One of the major contributors to this level of growth is MicroStrategy, the largest corporate holder. Bitcoin trends so far this year.
Source: CryptoQuant
CryptoQuant data reveals that MicroStrategy steadily filled the bag throughout the year, seeking to strengthen its position as the largest corporate BTC holder. The business intelligence company started the year with 189,000 BTC and has now grown by 112% to 402,000 coins.
Additionally, large Bitcoin investors have increased their holdings by a net 275,000 coins by 2024, reaching an all-time high of 16.4 million BTC, according to on-chain data. These numbers highlight the surge in institutional demand and the growing influence of cryptocurrencies and Bitcoin in traditional finance, especially over the past year.
Bitcoin price overview
As a result of a surge in adoption by institutional investors, BTC price has experienced rapid growth in 2024, recently reaching six-digit valuations. As of this writing, the premium cryptocurrency is worth just over $100,000, reflecting an increase of almost 5% over the past 24 hours. According to data from CoinGecko, BTC remains the largest cryptocurrency in the digital asset space, with a market capitalization of approximately $1.99 trillion.
The price of BTC on the daily timeframe | Source: BTCUSDT on the TradingView
Featured images from Shutterstock, charts from TradingView
