The Ruling
On February 28, 2024, Bitcoin achieved a milestone that would have seemed implausible just two years earlier during the depths of crypto winter: it entered the top ten assets in the world by market capitalization, surpassing Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway. The cryptocurrency’s market cap surged past $1.22 trillion as its price rocketed above $63,000, briefly touching $64,000 before a dramatic pullback to $59,500 and subsequent recovery above $60,700. Ethereum, the second-largest cryptocurrency, traded at $3,385 with a market cap exceeding $406 billion. The global crypto market cap had crossed $2.2 trillion, levels not seen since the peak of the 2021 bull market.
The catalyst was unmistakable: institutional capital was flooding into Bitcoin at an unprecedented rate through the newly approved spot ETFs. BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust recorded a staggering $520 million in net inflows on February 27 alone, making it the second-largest daily inflow for any US exchange-traded fund across all asset classes. IBIT had now attracted inflows for 32 consecutive days, pushing its assets under management past $8 billion. Total spot Bitcoin ETF inflows for the day reached $577 million, with cumulative inflows since January launch exceeding $6.7 billion.
International Precedents
The institutional wave was not confined to American shores. In Peru, the Bolsa de Valores de Lima became the latest stock exchange to list Bitcoin spot ETFs, joining a growing list of jurisdictions embracing crypto-based investment products. The United Kingdom’s Financial Conduct Authority was preparing to greenlight crypto-backed exchange-traded notes for professional investors, a move expected to unlock significant institutional demand in one of the world’s largest financial centers. In Hong Kong, regulators were finalizing frameworks for spot crypto ETFs, positioning the city as Asia’s primary gateway for digital asset investment.
Kraken, one of the oldest and most established cryptocurrency exchanges, announced the launch of a dedicated institutional division, signaling that the infrastructure supporting large-scale crypto investment was maturing rapidly. The moves across multiple jurisdictions reflected a coordinated global shift: governments and financial institutions were no longer asking whether crypto belonged in institutional portfolios, but how quickly they could build the rails to accommodate it.
Enforcement Reality
Yet the day’s events also exposed the fragility underlying the market’s rapid growth. Coinbase, the largest US cryptocurrency exchange and the primary custodian for approximately 90 percent of Bitcoin ETF issuers, suffered a severe outage as trading volumes overwhelmed its infrastructure. Users reported seeing zero balances across their accounts and were unable to execute trades during the most volatile session of the year. CEO Brian Armstrong attributed the crash to a “large surge of traffic,” but the incident wiped an estimated $100 billion from Bitcoin’s market capitalization in minutes and triggered over $700 million in futures liquidations across exchanges.
Citron Research publicly recommended shorting Coinbase stock while buying Bitcoin through ETFs — a direct rebuke of the operational risks embedded in centralized exchange infrastructure. The episode underscored a fundamental tension: the regulatory frameworks enabling institutional adoption were outpacing the technical capacity of the platforms tasked with executing it. Sam Bankman-Fried’s legal team was simultaneously in court seeking leniency ahead of his sentencing for the FTX collapse, a reminder that the industry’s credibility remained fragile even as its market cap soared.
Market Shockwaves
The supply-demand dynamics driving Bitcoin’s ascent were stark. Zach Pandl, head of research at Grayscale Investments, calculated that US spot Bitcoin ETFs were pulling in an average of $195 million per calendar day in February. The Bitcoin network, by contrast, produced roughly 900 coins per day — approximately $54 million worth at a $60,000 price point. “There is simply not enough bitcoin to accommodate all the new demand,” Pandl warned, noting that the upcoming halving in April would reduce daily issuance to just 450 coins.
The numbers told the story of a supply squeeze in real time. BlackRock’s IBIT trading volumes hit approximately $1.3 billion over two days. Despite Grayscale’s GBTC experiencing $7.6 billion in outflows since its ETF conversion, it remained the largest Bitcoin fund at roughly $25 billion in assets. Bitcoin proxy MicroStrategy saw its shares surge 10.5 percent, while miner Marathon Digital gained 2.4 percent. JPMorgan reported that retail crypto interest had rebounded sharply in February after a January pause, adding fuel to a fire already burning hot from institutional demand.
Closing Thoughts
Bitcoin’s entry into the top ten global assets by market cap represents a structural shift in the financial landscape, not merely a speculative milestone. The $520 million single-day inflow into BlackRock’s IBIT — a fund that did not exist two months earlier — demonstrates that the world’s largest asset manager has successfully bridged the gap between traditional finance and digital assets. But the Coinbase outage on the same day serves as a sobering counterpoint: the infrastructure underpinning this transformation remains brittle, and the regulatory frameworks governing it remain incomplete.
As the April halving approaches and daily Bitcoin issuance halves, the supply-demand imbalance will intensify. Whether this leads to new all-time highs or amplifies the volatility that already caught $700 million in liquidations on February 28 depends largely on whether the industry can build infrastructure resilient enough to handle the capital flows it has worked so hard to attract. The world’s top ten assets did not get there by crashing under pressure. Bitcoin’s next test will be proving it belongs among them.
Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial or investment advice. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Readers should conduct their own research and consult with a qualified financial advisor before making any investment decisions.
flipping Berkshire Hathaway in market cap is poetic. Buffett called BTC rat poison squared and now it is worth more than his company
$1.22T market cap and IBIT pulling $520M daily. this is just the beginning of institutional allocation, the real wave has not even started
Buffett could have bought the entire BTC supply for a fraction of what BRK spends on stock buybacks. the irony is brutal
buying the entire BTC supply would have moved the price 100x. but the point stands, a 1% allocation in 2018 would have outperformed every BRK holding
buffett called it rat poison squared in 2018. six years later BTC passed BRK market cap. the memes write themselves
the irony is BRK has been sitting on $160B+ in cash because buffett couldn’t find anything to buy. imagine if he’d allocated even 1% to BTC in 2018
32 consecutive days of IBIT inflows at that pace was unprecedented. BlackRock basically legitimized BTC for every pension fund in the country
32 consecutive days of inflows is insane for any ETF. blackrock basically proved there was years of pent-up institutional demand locked out by the grayscale premium