Bitcoin has caught the attention of Wall Street and mainstream investors over the past month after the price of bitcoin broke its 2017 highs (and now may be on the verge of climbing even more).
The price of bitcoin has added 300% over the past year, hitting $ 42,000 per bitcoin earlier this month before retreating slightly.
As investors consider whether to add bitcoin to their wallets, the new, smaller cryptocurrencies that are fueling the emerging decentralized finance (DeFi) market have soared – some having nearly doubled in the last week.
The price of bitcoin has lost around 6% over the past week, with major DeFi tokens including polkadot, … [+]
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DeFi, the idea that bitcoin and cryptocurrency technology can be used to recreate traditional financial instruments like loans and insurance, has exploded over the past year. The total value invested by investors in DeFi projects has grown from less than $ 1 billion this time last year to just over $ 23 billion today, according to data from DeFi Pulse.
Ethereum, the world’s largest cryptocurrency after bitcoin and the platform on which many of the biggest DeFi projects are built, has grown by more than 600% over the past year, largely due to growing interest in DeFi – the price of Ethereum having doubled just last month.
Ethereum rival polkadot this week became the world’s fourth largest cryptocurrency by total value, overtaking the besieged XRP token. Polkadot’s point token has tripled over the past month, adding gains of nearly 500% since August.
Polkadot is a proof-of-stake blockchain network, rewarding token holders unlike Bitcoin’s proof-of-work blockchain which rewards so-called miners. Polkadot claims to solve Ethereum’s scalability and interoperability issues.
Elsewhere, chainlink, an Ethereum-based token that powers a decentralized network designed to connect smart contracts to external data sources, added more than 40% to its value last week, bringing its total value to $ 6.4 billion. dollars.
Aave and maker, the two biggest DeFi projects in value, have climbed 75% and 47% respectively in the last week alone.
The price of bitcoin has traded sideways over the past week as smaller cryptocurrencies such as … [+]
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The recent rise in the prices of bitcoin, cryptocurrencies and DeFi assets has been blamed on further stimulus from the government and retail investors back in space three years after the huge bitcoin boom in 2017 and the fall that followed.
“While stimulus is on the horizon, the macroeconomic backdrop will remain very positive for risky assets like bitcoin and, given the recent spike in Google searches, retail investors are also starting to increase their investments in crypto.” Seamus Donoghue, Swiss Metaco vice president, digital asset infrastructure startup, said in email comments.
“This means that altcoins like ethereum, polkadot, cardano and Defi tokens are likely to start outperforming. The crypto market cap reaching $ 1 trillion will see new institutional investors start to worry about FOMO (fear of miss) which will shift the focus to slower-moving pension and endowment funds to explore investment opportunities in this emerging asset class. “
