Cryptocurrency Market Value Just Hit $500 Billion -- but Don't Thank Bitcoin

What an incredible year it has been for anyone with the right mix of smarts and luck to have invested in cryptocurrencies. At the beginning of the year, according to data from CoinMarketCap.com, the aggregate value of all cryptocurrencies combined was $17.7 billion. But during the evening of Dec. 12, the combined value of more than 1,350 virtual currencies surpassed $500 billion for the first time ever ($503 billion, to be exact). That's a year-to-date increase of more than 2,700%!

Allow that to sink in for a moment -- a half-trillion dollars in value is now being assigned to digital currencies. By comparison, it's taken the broad-based S&P 500 decades to deliver the same returns that some virtual currencies have returned in less than a year's time.

Image source: Getty Images.

Source: Fool.com