Bitcoin now world’s largest financial service; market cap crosses $500 billion

Cryptocurrency king Bitcoin is now the largest financial service in the world with the market cap surpassing Visa. Bitcoin is now valued at $508.97 billion, ahead of the $460.06 billion market cap of Visa, according to Companiesmarketcap. The price of Bitcoin crossed the $27,000-mark to hit a new all-time high of $27,375, according to Coindesk, at the time of filing this report. While Bitcoin and Visa may not be compared as the former is a peer-to-peer software system and the latter is a for-profit business, the digital currency is theoretically the 11th largest company globally based on its market cap, ahead of other businesses like Samsung, Walmart, Berkshire Hathaway, Coca Cola and more.

However, not just Bitcoin, Visa too is “very interested” in cryptocurrencies “that ultimately becomes fiat-based so there’s clear understanding of the value when there’s an exchange of crypto for the purchase of a good or a service,” its Chairman and CEO Alfred F. Kelly, Jr. told CNBC in November. Visa is already working with around 25 crypto businesses globally wherein the company is facilitating putting a Visa credential in their system where one can convert his/her “crypto based on a fiat currency and put the funds in a wallet where you can use them at anywhere Visa is accepted and it’s a way of making those funds cross our network,” added Kelly.

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Amid the surreal Bitcoin rally, Coinbase CEO and Co-founder Brian Armstrong had recently warned crypto investors of the inherent ‘risk’ in the asset class. “We cannot emphasize enough how important it is to understand that investing in crypto is not without risk. For one, crypto can be a volatile asset class — often more so than the types of traditional financial instruments that most investors are used to. For example, this means that the market can move in either direction much faster than equity markets,” Armstrong had said in a company blog post last week.

Among the top 10 financial service companies following Visa, as of December 27, 2020, were JPMorgan Chase ($379.56 billion), Mastercard ($334.96 billion), PayPal ($279.61 billion), Bank of America ($259.17 billion), Industrial and Commercial Bank of China ($257.97 billion), China Construction Bank ($185.31 billion), Agricultural Bank of China ($163.92 billion), SoftBank ($140.75 billion), and Bank of China ($129.82 billion).