If Crypto Were a Country, It Would Rival the World’s Fifth Largest Economy

No market in the world can match the volatility of crypto, and 2025 has made that clearer than ever. The first half of the year brought sharp swings, fragmented gains, shifting investor sentiment, but also more structured regulations and growing institutional interest. Despite these push-and-pull conditions and critics calling crypto a worthless asset with no real value, the number of users and the total crypto market cap continued to rise, reaching all-time highs.

According to data presented by Best Wallet, the cryptocurrency market cap hit $4.04 trillion this week. While this represents a 3% drop from an all-time high of $4.17 trillion on August 14, at this scale, crypto would now rival the world’s fifth-largest economy.

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With a $4 Trillion Market Cap, Crypto Would Rank Between Japan and India in Economic Scale

While crypto is not an economy in the same sense as a country and comparing market cap with GDP might seem like an “apples to oranges” exercise, it`s still a powerful way to capture the scale and pace of this market`s growth. Today, all cryptocurrencies combined are valued at $4.04 trillion, 92% more than in the same month a year ago, 288% more than in September 2023, and almost ten times their value just five years ago.

Compared with global GDP figures, that $4 trillion valuation would make crypto the world’s fifth-largest economy, right behind Germany and Japan, and ahead of India ($3.5 trillion). The scale becomes even more striking when compared with economies further down the list.

For instance, $4 trillion is 80% higher than the annual GDP of countries like Italy, Brazil, Canada, and Russia, double that of Australia, South Korea, and Spain, and four times that of Switzerland or Poland.

With a combined market capitalization of $4.04 trillion, cryptocurrency also rivals some of the biggest stock exchanges. Its market value now surpasses that of the London Stock Exchange, at around $3.42 trillion, and the Toronto Stock Exchange, at roughly $3 trillion. On the other hand, giants like the New York Stock Exchange, with a market cap of over $25 trillion, are still much bigger than the entire crypto market.

Top 10 Coins Make Up Over 90% of Total Market Value

And while the crypto market`s value has grown tremendously over the years, one of its biggest downsides is the disproportion between the major coins and the rest of the market. As of last week, the crypto space counted 9,351 coins and tokens, roughly 1,000 less than at the beginning of the year. However, the top ten coins alone made up 91% of the total market value. That means the crypto space is still flooded with worthless coins, with 98% of them worth less than a dollar, only 49 valued at over $100, and just 19 are more than $1,000.