The momentum of the weekend continued until Monday, bringing the total market value to a record high of $4.1 trillion.
While this number covers thousands of digital assets rather than single companies, this milestone still clearly illustrates how much progress has been made in this area.
Almost all the major tokens are rising, but the focus remains on bitcoin and the Ethera.
Bitcoin grew by 4 per cent over the weekend, reaching $122,200 in the morning of Monday, British time, less than 1 per cent from the peak of $123,200 in July.
Climbing to $4350 by the Taifeng, the highest price since the peak of the cattle market in 2021 was $485, is now about 12 per cent below its historical peak.
With new policy adjustments, increased inflows of exchange-trade funds and increased stakes on interest-rate reductions in the United States, the wave has given new impetus to top-level encrypted currencies.
Key drivers
Three major factors are driving the rise in prices of major encrypted currencies, such as bitcoin and Taifung, according to analysts.
The first was an executive order issued by Donald Trump, which allowed the 401(k) retirement plan to be invested in encrypted currency. The total retirement assets of the United States exceeded $12 trillion, and even a small percentage of the distribution could translate into new purchasing power of tens of billions of dollars.
“This may be one of the most critical moments in the mainstream of the use of bitcoin and encrypted currency,” said Mena Theodorou, co-founder of Coinstat, in an interview with DL News.
The continuing inflow of pension funds is likely to “expand their use, help to reduce volatility and better embed encrypted money in the mainstream financial infrastructure”, supplemented by Theodorou.
Second, ETF inflows re-emerge. Over the past nine weeks, the Bitcoin Fund has achieved net inflows for eight weeks, an increase of about $10 billion, which represents almost 20 per cent of the $54 billion they have withdrawn since its launch in January 2024.
EPF is also rapidly inflow, with $460 million on Friday alone, the fourth largest such day in recorded history.
ETF Store Managing Director Nate Geraci said on platform X: "In the past month, eight days of the first 10 ETAs, including all the first five days."
Finally, the weakening macroeconomic environment contributed to the expected interest rate decline in the United States.
“United States economic data are weaker than expected, leading investors to believe that the Fed would lower interest rates by 25 basis points at its September meeting. In an interview with DL News, Simon Pierce, an encrypted analyst from eToro, said:
He added that this “may further promote the price of encrypted assets and further increase the total market value”.
The futures market now expects an 88 per cent decline in interest rates for the Federal Reserve in September, a change reminiscent of the “rate-down boom” in late 2024, when the price of bitcoin doubled in four months.