The cryptocurrency industry has grown exponentially since its initial stage, when only bitcoin existed, when it was difficult to purchase a single one, even though it cost cents and mere dollars. It has also grown massively since the first altcoins appeared, but it was still hard to find a place to accumulate some.
In the following decade or so, though, early bird crypto investors used every big price movement as an opportunity to insist that “we are still early.” And, in most cases, they were right. But, is that still adequate to say in August 2025?
We have come a long way since bitcoin was an unknown Internet magic currency. A long way since legacy investors started to learn about it, but were mostly ignorant. And a long way since they knew about it, but were still hesitant and dismissive.
No, no, these times have passed as bitcoin is now a global asset monster. It has skyrocketed into a well-known phenomenon, with a market capitalization bigger than Meta, silver, Berkshire Hathaway, and many others. Even with its latest correction, it still finds a solid place within the 10 largest global assets by market cap.
It’s on Wall Street, too. Asset management behemoths rushed to launch ETFs tracking its performance, and a few of them have broken records in just a year and a half of existence.
Large companies are accumulating it. It’s not just Strategy, but many others, like GameStop and Metaplanet, have joined the race to purchase considerable quantities.
Governments are waking up to it. El Salvador led the pack in 2021, but these days, even the US government has stopped selling its stash and is mulling adding it to its reserve list of assets.
Building up on this, popular YouTuber CryptoGoos recently posted:
“You are not early in crypto anymore. That part of the cycle is over. BTC already did a 5x. Now, we’re entering the phase where only the sharp survive.”
The narrative above goes mainly for bitcoin, but it could also be attributed to some of the larger-cap altcoins, especially in terms of market cap. However, it’s a long shot since there are only three crypto reps in the largest 100 global assets – BTC, ETH, and XRP.
That’s a very small percentage. Also, there’s the total crypto market cap, which, even at its peak in July, was at just over $4 trillion. Although that sounds impressive, given that it was below $1 trillion a few years ago, it’s still a long, long way from the overall financial world and the trillions and trillions of dollars in exchange daily.
Just for reference, NVIDIA, the world’s largest company by market cap, is more valuable according to that metric than the entire crypto industry. Gold, which is the world’s single biggest asset, is more than 5x above these levels at over $22.5 trillion.
CryptoGoos’ post concludes that while BTC might be beyond the “too early” narrative, there are still some opportunities for those who take their time to study the industry and not rely on luck anymore.
