Crypto Market Cap Hits $2.7 Trillion, Clearing Bull Market Threshold

The cryptocurrency sector's total market capitalization reached nearly $2.7 trillion as of September 13, a 30% increase from the bear market bottom of $2.1 trillion recorded at the end of June 2026. This rise clears the threshold defined by Investor.gov for a bull market, which requires a gain of 20% or more over at least two months, although the sector has held above this level for only a few weeks.

Alex Carchidi of The Motley Fool predicts that Zcash (CRYPTO: ZEC), Solana (CRYPTO: SOL), and Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH) are worth buying and holding for at least three to five years. He argues that each network is positioned to benefit from specific technological developments and market shifts, though he notes that certain outcomes remain contingent on future adoption and technical implementation.

Zcash currently offers private transactions and shielded wallet balances but lacks the token creation features found on Solana or Ethereum. Carchidi highlights Zcash Shielded Assets (ZSAs) as a proposed upgrade that would enable private tokens on the chain. While technical development and privacy audits have been underway for several years, coinholders voted against implementing ZSAs in a February 2026 Zcash Foundation governance poll, excluding the upgrade from the next network update. Despite this rejection, Carchidi believes the upgrade will likely be implemented in the future due to its potential value to the network.

Solana is gaining traction in the tokenized real-world assets (RWAs) sector, which includes stocks and bonds held as blockchain tokens. As of September 13, Solana held the third-largest base of tokenized stocks, totaling $503 million. In the preceding 30 days, its total base of tokenized assets rose by 11% to reach $4.3 billion. Carchidi suggests Solana may soon overtake Ethereum in the tokenized stock space due to consistent inflows. Additionally, artificial intelligence agents are expanding on the chain; on August 20, corporate spending platform Ramp opened its x402 payment protocol to over 70,000 businesses on Solana. Typical x402 payments in August were just under $0.50, with Solana's fee revenue driven by transaction volume rather than size.

Ethereum hosts $17.2 billion in tokenized real-world assets as of mid-September and supports ERC-8004, an identity standard for AI agents. These factors position Ethereum to compete with Solana, particularly in slower-moving non-stock assets. The network is also undergoing a strategic shift regarding its scaling approach. On February 3, co-founder Vitalik Buterin stated that routing network activity to Layer-2 networks is no longer sensible given the main chain's need to scale. This is significant because base transaction fees on the main chain are burned, potentially retiring coins if demand outgrows capacity. Furthermore, Ethereum Improvement Proposal EIP-8363 is in development to burn part of the newly issued coins paid to network operators. While the precise path Ethereum will take remains unclear, Carchidi suggests the underlying technology is likely to adapt in ways that benefit long-term holders.