Cryptocurrency has risen to a new all-time high of nearly a half-trillion dollars, rising as money exits the fiat currency sector.

The recent astronomical rise of cryptocurrencies has been described by many financial pundits and media sources as a bubble, carrying a risk of a crash. However, according to Ryan Taylor, CEO of Dash Core, this instead represents the early stages of the central banking bubble popping:

This week the cryptocurrency markets reached a new all-time high, over $493 billion at time of writing, just short of the half-trillion dollar mark. This is nearly $140 billion higher than the same time last week, and nearly $300 billion higher than one month ago. At the beginning of the year, the combined value of cryptocurrency was only at $18 billion.

Dash’s exceptional year

Dash in particular has had a year of exceptional growth. At the beginning of the year, the value of a single Dash was just about $10. At time of writing, that same coin is worth approaching $1,000. Its present market cap is over $7 billion and rising.

Most notably, Dash’s monthly treasury available to pay projects in the ecosystem has now exceeded $6 million. This available budget can fund any project or organization deemed useful to the Dash community by the masternodes, including exchange and business integrations, exclusivity contracts, business adoption teams, media, development, etc. This can have a long-term effect in strengthening the ecosystem, and therefore the price, which in turn grows the available budget, perpetuating a “virtuous cycle” of constant growth.

The “flippening” still to come

Present developments represent a flow of capital out of the old fiat currency central banking-dominated systems into digital, peer-to-peer assets. However, the change that has not yet come to pass is the switch to using digital payment methods. When peer-to-peer digital cash catches on as a more efficient means of payment and wealth transfer than banking services, we may see an even greater “flippening” to cryptocurrency.