The S&P 500 has crossed the $70 trillion market capitalization threshold for the first time, with the index simultaneously pushing past the 7,700 level. To put that number in perspective, $70 trillion is roughly the combined GDP of the US, China, and Japan.

The milestone caps a staggering run. The index hit $67.8 trillion on May 29, blew past $69 trillion by June 2, and kept climbing. The total US stock market capitalization reached $75.3 trillion as of July 1, with more than ten S&P 500 constituents individually worth over $1 trillion. The 7,000 level, which the index first crossed in January, already feels like ancient history.

Big tech is doing the heavy lifting

This rally has a familiar engine. A concentrated group of large-cap technology stocks has driven the bulk of the gains. Concentration risk is the phrase that keeps showing up in analyst notes. When a handful of companies account for an outsized share of an index’s total value, any stumble from those names sends ripples through the entire market.

AI-driven earnings growth has been the narrative justifying elevated valuations for many of these tech giants. Some analysts have started using the B-word. Bubble. Not as a definitive call, but as a consideration.

Where crypto fits into a $70T equity market

In April, BlackRock-backed Securitize partnered with Computershare to tokenize portions of the US equity market on blockchain infrastructure. Tokenized equities could enable 24/7 trading, fractional ownership at granular levels, and near-instant settlement. The current T+1 settlement window for US stocks, itself a recent improvement from T+2, would look quaint compared to blockchain-based settlement measured in seconds.

The correlation between traditional equities and crypto markets has tightened considerably over the past few years. Bitcoin and the S&P 500 have increasingly moved in tandem during risk-on environments, which means a record-breaking equity market tends to create favorable conditions for digital assets as well.

What this means for investors

For crypto-native investors, the Securitize-Computershare partnership signals that tokenization isn’t a theoretical exercise anymore. It’s an active project backed by institutional capital.

Concentrated markets tend to correct violently when sentiment shifts, and a pullback in US equities would likely drag crypto markets down with it, given the tightened correlation. Investors straddling both worlds need to account for the fact that diversification between stocks and crypto isn’t the hedge it once appeared to be.