These last two days we have seen a drop in the cryptocurrency market. Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency by market share, slid 7% in just 24 hours after seeing gains of up to 20% for Bitcoin. We have repeated countless times that this market, among other things, is characterized by its volatility, so these fluctuations are not new nor will they cease to exist. What we must pay attention to is the adoption of this technology and how it can this technology can find new and improved applications. In the first half of this 2021, we have seen that the industry has received a capital injection of $ 8.7 billion dollars from institutional investors and financial companies. This amount is more than twice of what was invested in all of 2020 and surpasses the record of $ 7.2 billion invested in 2018.
This great interest in blockchain and cryptocurrencies is not only from entrepreneurs seeking to innovate or from investors seeking wealth, but now it is also from governments, banking institutions, and regulators. We are witnessing that this new investors are more mature companies and institutions that are finally seeing this industry as something that is here to stay and that it has the potential to improve finance and the way we interact with our money.
Banking institutions such as Barclays, Citibank, JP Morgan Chase, and Goldman Sacks have entered the game, by starting to build exchange platforms and are in the process of designing applications to be able to safeguard the cryptocurrencies of their clients, something known as crypto custody. The irony of all this is that a little less than two years ago, these same institutions detested the crypto market and dared to say that Bitcoin was the worst technological invention of all time, without any real use, and a rubbish as an investment bound to disappear.
Needless to say, adoption to the crypto market and this industry is growing rapidly, and we still do not see much government money entering the space, but surely, governments will find creative ways to use blockchain and cryptocurrencies to their own advantage.