As of April 24, 2025, Bitcoin's market capitalization of $1.625 trillion surpasses that of Alphabet, Google's parent company, ranking it fifth in global asset market capitalization, only behind gold, Apple, Nvidia, and Microsoft. This milestone event not only marks a strong return of cryptocurrency but also reveals the deeper logic of blockchain technology restructuring the global financial order. In this 'code revolution,' Bitcoin is both the ultimate form of value storage and the fulcrum for driving the development of the entire blockchain industry.
1. The Three Pillars of Bitcoin's Market Capitalization Hegemony
1. The 'On-Chain Great Migration' of Institutional Capital
In the first quarter of 2025, Tesla's financial report shows it holds 11,509 Bitcoins, valued at $951 million, making it one of the largest Bitcoin holders among publicly traded companies. More notably, Cantor Fitzgerald, in collaboration with SoftBank and Tether, has established a $3 billion Bitcoin acquisition platform, 21 Capital, aiming to reshape the market supply-demand structure through systematic hoarding. The entry of institutional investors has shifted from early exploration to strategic allocation—Bloomberg data shows that 37 of the top 100 publicly traded companies globally have included Bitcoin in their balance sheets, with an average allocation ratio of 5.2% of liquid assets.
This trend is closely related to Bitcoin's 'digital gold' attribute. Against the backdrop of the Federal Reserve maintaining high interest rates, the 90-day price correlation between Bitcoin and gold has surged from 0.32 in 2024 to 0.68, becoming a core tool for hedging the risk of fiat currency depreciation.
2. The 'National Machine Endorsement' of Policy Dividends
In March 2025, the U.S. Treasury announced the inclusion of Bitcoin in its 'cryptocurrency strategic reserves,' reaching 45%, directly pushing its price above the psychological threshold of $100,000. This policy resonates with El Salvador's experiment of designating Bitcoin as legal tender: the country's Bitcoin wallet, Chivo, has surpassed 4 million users, and the cost of cross-border remittances has dropped by 87%, becoming a model for financial inclusion in developing countries.
The deregulation under the Trump administration has further accelerated this process. The SEC defines Bitcoin as a 'non-security digital commodity,' allowing retirement funds to allocate up to 3% of their assets in Bitcoin. Policymakers clearly recognize that Bitcoin's on-chain transparency (a fixed supply of 21 million coins, verifiable network computing power) better meets the needs of modern financial regulation than traditional gold.
3. The 'Value Capture Upgrade' of Technological Evolution
Although Bitcoin's mainnet continues to focus on value storage, the technological breakthroughs in its ecosystem cannot be ignored:
• Lightning Network: In 2025, channel capacity is expected to exceed 8,200 BTC, with the number of merchants supporting micro-payment scenarios increasing by 300% year-on-year;
• RGB Protocol: Achieving smart contract functionality through client-side verification, resulting in Bitcoin-based DeFi protocols' TVL exceeding $5 billion;
• Mining Innovation: Kazakhstan's mining facilities powered by nuclear energy have reduced Bitcoin's overall network carbon intensity to 38g CO₂/kWh, lower than traditional banking operations.
These innovations have shifted Bitcoin from 'static store of value' to 'dynamic value network,' injecting new momentum into its market capitalization growth.
2. The Split of the Blockchain Industry Under Market Capitalization Hegemony
1. The 'Central Bankization' Process of Stablecoins
USDT, with a market capitalization exceeding $80 billion, firmly holds the position of the leading stablecoin, but its role has evolved from a trading medium to an 'on-chain central bank':
• Cross-Border Payments: JPMorgan's cross-border trade settled in USDT reaches an average of $12 billion per day, saving 19 hours of settlement time compared to the SWIFT system;
• Interest Rate Tools: Protocols like Compound have launched USDT savings products with annualized returns of 4.8%, approaching the Federal Reserve's benchmark rate levels.
This evolution is challenging traditional currency sovereignty—Tether's holdings of U.S. Treasury bonds have surpassed the central bank reserves of countries like Mexico and South Africa.
2. The Competition of 'Functional Tokenization' in Public Chains
Although Ethereum's market capitalization lags behind Bitcoin, its smart contract ecosystem still dominates industry innovation:
• Layer 3 Custom Chains: Morgan Stanley, Visa, and other institutions build private chains based on Ethereum and connect to mainnet liquidity via cross-chain bridges;
• Commercialization of ZK-Rollup: StarkWare's Cairo language reduces transaction costs for DeFi protocols to $0.001, driving daily trading volume in derivatives to exceed $30 billion.
Meanwhile, Solana attracts game developers with its 65,000 TPS performance, and its Mystique scaling solution allows GameFi users to average 47 transactions per day, far exceeding traditional Web2 games.
3. The Prototype of 'Value Internet' through Cross-Chain Interoperability
Polkadot achieves cross-chain asset transfers through 200 parallel chains, and its XCMP protocol reduces the atomic swap time between Bitcoin and Ethereum from 30 minutes to 9 seconds. This interoperability is fostering new economic forms:
• NFT Fragmentation: A Beeple digital artwork is divided into one million pieces through cross-chain splitting, trading simultaneously on Solana and Ethereum;
• DAO Governance Collaboration: The Aave community uses Chainlink oracles to obtain multi-chain data, achieving dynamic adjustments of cross-chain lending rates.
3. Challenges and Reflections Behind Hegemony
1. The 'Regulatory Tightening' and 'Umbrella' of Regulation
Despite relatively loose U.S. policies, the EU's MiCA legislation requires Bitcoin holders to undergo KYC verification, while India imposes a 30% capital gains tax on on-chain transactions exceeding $10,000. The space for regulatory arbitrage is shrinking—Chainalysis data shows that dark web Bitcoin trading volume is expected to decline by 62% year-on-year in 2025, accelerating the compliance process.
2. The 'Paradigm Shift' of Energy Narratives
The energy consumption of Bitcoin mining remains a focal point of public opinion, but the share of clean energy such as nuclear and geothermal has risen to 58%. More notably, the Texas power grid uses Bitcoin mining facilities to adjust power peaks and valleys, reducing $230 million in wasted electricity each year. The combination of energy-intensive industries and blockchain is rewriting the discourse on sustainable development.
3. The 'Quantum Entanglement' of Centralization and Decentralization
Data shows that the top 1% of Bitcoin addresses control 23% of the circulating supply, an increase of 7 percentage points since 2020. Custodial institutions like Grayscale and Coinbase hold over 5 million Bitcoins, posing real challenges to the 'decentralization ideal.' As Bitcoin becomes a strategic reserve asset for nations, whether its censorship-resistant characteristics will be diluted remains the biggest suspense for the next decade.
Conclusion: The New Financial Order of Code Reconstruction
Bitcoin's market capitalization reaching the top is essentially a victory of algorithmic consensus over the fiat currency system. As the global asset rankings are constantly rewritten by blockchain projects, we are witnessing the technological realization of Hayek's prophecy of 'the denationalization of money.' However, this revolution is far from over—Bitcoin's ultimate opponent may not be the dollar, but the boundaries of human imagination regarding the distribution of financial power.
