Global cryptocurrency market cap hits $2.6 trillion, returning to all-time high

Over the weekend, the market cap of the entire crypto market broke $2.6 trillion, according to data from CoinGecko. This puts it back at levels last seen in May when bitcoin first topped the $60,000 mark.

Since breaking above this figure, the size of the crypto market has slightly declined to $2.58 trillion.

The surge has largely been driven by bitcoin and ether, which comprise 61.5% of the market. Since the start of the year, Bitcoin's price has doubled, rising from $29,000 to $61,000 today. This added an extra $616 billion to the crypto market.

Ether's price rise was even more explosive, increasing by 411% from $738 to $3,775 today. But since it has a smaller market cap, it only added an extra $365 billion to the market.

Since ether's price rose faster than bitcoin, however, it did eat into its market share. Ether's share of the market has grown from 7.4% to 17.5% over the course of the year. In contrast, bitcoin's dominance has declined from 65.9% to 44.9%.

The rest of the total market cap is spread across the remaining 9819 coins that CoinGecko tracks. There are 19 more coins with market caps above $10 billion, including binance coin, cardano and XRP, which make up a significant portion of the remaining market.