Bitcoin's market cap surpasses Nvidia at over $336B

Both Bitcoin and Nvidia saw major growth in 2020, but Bitcoin’s market cap wins today.

Amid a meteoric bull run in the cryptocurrency market, Bitcoin (BTC) is overtaking another major American company in terms of market capitalization.

As the Bitcoin price briefly crossed the $18,000 threshold on Nov. 18, Bitcoin’s market cap surged above $336 billion, outstripping the market cap of Nvidia — one of the world’s most well-known manufacturers of graphics cards.

On Nov. 17, Nvidia’s shares closed at $330.7 billion, according to data from Macro Trends. The close follows a significant decline from a $358.7 billion threshold recorded on Nov. 2. At publishing time, Bitcoin’s market cap accounts for $336 billion, according to data from CoinMarketCap.

Nvidia’s five-year market cap chart. Source: Macro Trends

Bitcoin’s new market cap milestone against Nvidia comes amid both Bitcoin and Nvidia seeing major growth in 2020.

As reported by Cointelegraph, Bitcoin has surged by nearly 400% this year, skyrocketing from below $4,000 in January 2020 to over $18,000 in November. Nvidia’s market cap surged more than 100% this year, up from around $150 billion to over $350 billion. According to Nvidia’s financial results released in August 2020, the company saw record revenue of $3.87 billion in the second quarter of 2020, up 50% from 2019.

Bitcoin and Nvidia have some close ties, as the latter is providing one of the world’s best-performing GPU cards for mining cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. As previously reported, Nvidia might be facing some issues due to its crypto mining-related activity.

In May 2020, a class action accused Nvidia of misrepresenting over $1 billion in sales to downplay the firm’s reliance on sales to crypto miners. In September 2020, Nvidia’s legal representatives argued that its investors are not entitled to access its internal records about the “crypto craze” of 2017 and 2018.