Towards the end of last year, we all saw how the implosion of Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX shaved $100 billion off of Bitcoin’s market cap in just four days. Well, there’s good news. Bitcoin (BTC) has successfully bounced back and added $65 billion to its market capitalization.

Once again, Bitcoin’s market capitalization has surpassed that of payment processing giant Visa, thanks to a 48 percent surge in the price of the cryptocurrency since the beginning of the year.

Source: CoinMarketCap.

The assertion is per a report from CoinMarketCap that Bitcoin’s current price at $24,365 has propelled its market capitalization to $470.16 billion, which is slightly higher than Visa’s market capitalization of $469.87 billion. This is the third time Bitcoin has surpassed Visa in market capitalization.

The first time this happened was in December 2020. At the time, BTC hit $25,000 for the first time. This feat happened during a price surge that made BTC experience a rally from $10,200 in September 2020 to $63,170 in April 2021, seven months later, 

However, between June and October 2022, Visa regained its lead, but on October 1st, BTC briefly surpassed Visa before the payments company retook the lead once again. After the now-defunct cryptocurrency exchange FTX went bankrupt, BTC lost more than $100 billion in value in just four days, from November 6th to November 10th, 2022. This made the lead even bigger.

Against all odds, since that ugly incident, BTC has not only been able to recover but has also gained an additional $65 billion in market cap, surpassing the payment processing giant, Visa.

It’s worth noting that due to the small difference in market cap between BTC and Visa, the two are currently flipping positions by the second. 

BTC had a remarkable start in 2023, marked by its third successful “flippening” of Visa. This achievement was attributed to a two-week period between January 4th and January 17th, during which BTC demonstrated consistent price growth for 14 consecutive days.

Google Finance says that BTC’s market capitalization is much higher than Mastercard’s, which is the second largest payment processing network after Visa and is worth $345.24 billion right now. Even so, BTC’s value is still 63% below its all-time high of $69,044, which was reached on November 10, 2021.

For crypto enthusiasts, this is a great time to be alive.